SOUTH PORTLAND, Maine — With just hours to go until Thanksgiving break, students at Dyer Elementary School in South Portland were practically bouncing off the walls on Tuesday, Nov. 21. The good news: The educators here have decades of experience under their belts and have just the remedy to channel holiday excitement into a productive activity.
This fall, librarian Beth Andersen decided to lead a project called "Balloons Over Broadway." Children read a book about the man who created the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade and then decorated their own balloons. On Tuesday, they attached those to small robotic cars, programmed to follow colorful tiles that mimic New York City's extravaganza.
"This is like digital citizenship and coding at a very low level," Andersen said, noting she believes the library is a place for exploration.
Andersen is on a mission to move work in the library from beyond just literature into the realm of STEM. She said she thinks it's important for people to get interested in science, technology, engineering, and math at a young age – especially because of the digital world we're living in now.
"We need kids to know that someone created that app that they’re using, or there’s coding behind that website that they’re going to or the video game that they’re playing," Andersen said. "We don’t want kids to be passive consumers."
She said learning coding takes a long time, but early introductions to it can help. She said the Maine Department of Education provided a grant to fund the robotic cars these kids get to use.
"They’re learning the language of a computer," Andersen said about her students. "We don’t learn languages overnight – French, Spanish, Portuguese. Same with coding. It’s something we need to gradually learn over the years.”
"We’re raising 21st-century children. They're preparing themselves, and we’re helping to prepare them, for jobs and occupations that we don’t even know about yet," Barbara Fletcher, the principal of Dyer Elementary School, said.
Fletcher said watching the students problem solve to get their robotic cars to follow the tiled path is "magic" on the part of Andersen.
"Seeing the success at the end when they’ve figured something out or solved a problem is really exciting for us, as well," Fletcher said.
Andersen said "Balloons Over Broadway" is a great example of the importance of funding and staffing school libraries.
“I just think libraries should be the heart of a school,” Andersen said.