Most people don’t associate Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara as a place for people to learn, let alone as a destination for teachers. But Levi’s Stadium was just that on Friday, May 18, for 20 teachers—including teachers from eight Santa Clara schools—to learn more about STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics) and how these can be integrated into the classroom.
The day’s learning event was the first of several Professional Development sessions by the Bay Area Host Committee (BAHC) and Extra Yard for Teachers (EYFT)—the College Football Playoff (CFP) Foundation’s charitable arm. As with Friday’s session, all of the upcoming sessions will be held at Levi’s Stadium, leading up to the College Football Playoff National Championship to be played on Jan. 7, 2019.
The session put the teachers back in the role of students as they were given an assignment to design and build football shoulder pads with a fixed set of components. However, the components were straws, cotton balls, magic markers, yarn, plastic zip top bags and a basic design made out of cardboard.
The idea behind the exercise was to focus on collaboration in developing the design in a limited amount of time and then actually making the shoulder pads. Once the pads were done, they were tested in two exercises—doing a standing broad jump and throwing a football—both to see how much the design moved or restricted movement. This led to a discussion on integrating STEAM in the classroom and how something like this project could be integrated into teaching STEAM in the classroom.
With most of the learning behind them, the participating teachers had one more surprise waiting for them. After lunch, the teachers received a surprise—$2,000 worth of DonorsChoose.org projects to be used to help them pay for projects they work on with their students. For more information on EYFT, visit their website: www.cfp-foundation.org/extra-yard-for-teachers