Though the school day had ended, learning continued to the night.
Parents and their children gathered at P.S. 233 Langston Hughes School on Friday evening, February 10th, as the school held its third annual S.T.E.A.M (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Mathematics) Family Night.
S.T.E.A.M Family Night was organized by the school S.T.E.A.M. Committee made up of classroom teachers and headed by Assistant Principal Janice Sydney–Smith, 2nd-grade teacher, Sade Constantine, and Library Teacher, Howard Goldberg. The Parent-Teacher Association also provided support for the event. S.T.E.A.M Family Night is where students and their parents can learn computational thinking strategies, computer science, programming, and other technical skills.
“The family night shows parents and children that computer science is the future,” said Sydney Smith. “We want them to understand that and Covid also propelled [the use] of technology with children knowing how to manipulate computer science. It helps parents and students to understand that technology is the future and they are learning how to code robots and code different computers.”
Throughout the event, children engaged in various activities and games that taught them how to build, program and code. One board game, Robot Turtles, taught children the first steps to coding. The toy Code-a-Pillar lets children rearrange the Code-a-Pillar’s parts in an endless combination that move the Code-a-Pillar in whatever path is set. Robot Dash showed how coding is implemented as children put their codes into their iPads and moved the robots however they wanted.
Parents also partook in the activities as Howard Goldberg, the library teacher, taught them the first lessons of coding and how important it is in today’s world.
“I was really excited that the parents stepped up and actually got into doing some coding on their own,” said Goldberg. “It’s a challenging thing that exposes your fears cause you’re doing something that you don’t know how to do and it takes courage to sit down and try a whole new skill. We also teach the coding as part of our library program here and I think it’s a great skill for the kids to have. It’s something that could further their futures because so much of the work of the future is going to involve computer coding.”
P.S. 233 is located at 9301 Avenue B.
