The leadership program for the teachers of STEAM fields in Zaporizhya, Kryvyi Rih and Mariupol was initiated by the public organizations like "Zaporizhya. The Joint action platform", "The Foundation of the Future of Kryvyi Rih" and "Mariupol Development Fund", supported by the Metinvest Group. Around 500 teachers from schools, colleges and universities participated in the program, with 90 of them coming from Zaporizhya.
The training under the STEAM Camp program consisted of individual thematic modules dedicated to developing soft skills, strategic and critical thinking, and leadership skills. The teachers found out about new digital teaching educational tools, visited modern Ukrainian enterprises that are striving to employ graduates from technical specialties.
The acquired knowledge will help teachers share their experience and exploratory works in order to tempt school-children to study mathematics, physics, chemistry, and computer science. Therefore, they aim to achieve a greater number of successful results during the External Independent Test in exact sciences and contribute to the further entering of graduates into field-oriented higher educational institutions for technical specialties.
On June 30, 2021, the program outcomes were summarized, involving representatives of international organizations, participants of the STEAM Camp project, city education departments, implementers, and project partners, namely, the Iron and Steel Works Zaporizhstal.
"STEAM Camp is a program that combined all state-of-the-art approaches, forms and formats of education for the current school pupils. Like many other educational projects supported by Metinvest, the STEAM Camp has become a centre of applied instruments and know-how approaches. I have no doubt that this program is one of the important steps to increase interest in the exact sciences among the young generation," said Alexander Mironenko, the CEO of Zaporizhstal.
Close to the finalization of the STEAM Camp, the teachers developed over 400 integrated lessons, applying all the knowledge acquired during the training. The lessons will be released on a special Internet platform, where teachers could share their exploratory works and apply them in practice. The teachers point out that they have collected valuable experience by participating in the program and have already started to practice it, issuing innovative educational content.
Additionally, regional exhibitions of the art project "Science - this is it", STEM is FEM, supported by the UN Women in Ukraine and the UN Children's Fund in Ukraine (UNICEF) were launched as part of the STEAM Camp program. The purpose of which is to promote technical specialties among female pupils.