Help Make Dreams Come True for Rural Physics Students at Disney World
Help me give my students an opportunity to experience the physics and STEM principles applied to the engineering, design, and technology-centered careers and education at Walt Disney World.
Our physics/STEM students are a group of highly motivated young men and women that look to not only challenge themselves in the lab and classroom but in their respective fields of study. These fields include STEM ideas like engineering, designing, programming, and coding. They also include ideas that are embraced by art, theater and business.
These students are dreamers and deserve to see just how great of an opportunity the world provides for them, when they work diligently, and graciously on their own and as a team.
The possibilities to them are sometimes limited to their experiences and reality that they have been exposed to. And in a rural school, this can take a while to overcome.
Together, we want to give our rural students an opportunity to see the amazing and incredible opportunities that exist in the big beautiful STEM world that we live in. And together we want to discover the STEM opportunities in the world beyond high school and college, knowing that they really embrace all the curiosities and questions that we have, to help find solutions to problems that we experience now, and in the future.
My Project
Attending a rural high school can present students with many challenges. The geography can limit a student's experience and exposure to industries and businesses that make an impact all over the world. The commitment to off-campus visits is more demanding because travel is all-day, most of the time leaving before school and arriving after school. This means that sometimes students will miss out on the vision and hope of a career that they may not know even exists. So when we do travel, we demand high-level rigor and relevancy for the students.
We believe that each student deserves to see what our incredible world has to offer to them for inspiration now and for their future.
Disney's Youth Education Series programs offer a once in a lifetime chance for rural students to see the physics and STEM concepts they've been studying applied to one of the greatest engineered places on earth and see it as an extension of the classroom. In our STEM and physics classes, we learn that the product is not always the most important piece; it's the process. That process leads to the incredible engineering marvels you see at Disney World.
Students will spend two days at two different parks being taught how to articulate just how Newton’s Laws, inertia, and centripetal acceleration make the rides more thrilling, how hydraulics and pneumatics operate, and why efficiency is so pivotal in the process. On the second day, students, alongside Disney educators, will learn how technology is impacted by social and economic forces, human knowledge, government influence, and a society's wants and needs. At the end of our experience, we want our students to articulate the role of STEM in the development of technology all while creating memories and connections that last a lifetime.
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As a teacher-founded nonprofit, we're trusted by thousands of teachers and supporters across the country. This classroom request for funding was created by Mr. Lay and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.
