Anderson High School is one of 16 schools that recently gained STEM certification from the Indiana Department of Education.
The announcement was made during the Anderson Community Schools’ Board of Trustees monthly meeting Monday evening.
According to an email from IDOE, the certification recognizes “a highly innovative approach to education, employing a great deal of inquiry, project-based learning, community engagement, entrepreneurship, student-centered classrooms, and integration into humanities and related arts and out-of-school STEM activities.”
Andrew Jones, the district’s STEM coordinator, said AHS is the only school in Madison County to receive the certification, which will remain valid through 2030.
He said the certification recognizes what the high school has been doing for many years. Jones said he hopes to expand the program.
“It is so important that the kids we are educating today are prepared for jobs that we do not even know what they will be in five years, whenever these kids hit the job market,” Jones said. “Five years ago, AI was barely being talked about, and now it is in everything.
He said many projects worked on by students reflect the reality of rapidly advancing technology and, at their core, “are really about taking a problem and figuring out how to break it down and how to create a solution. Those are the skills people are going to need to be able to do.”
Superintendent Joe Cronk, announced that, with the increase of Spanish speaking students and families moving into the district, the school corporation has partnered with Ivy Tech in Anderson to provide staff and faculty with a “Spanish for School Staff” course.
It was a 12-week, course that staff members could sign up and participate in free of charge. In the end, about 100 staff members took part. Cronk said officials plan to continue the course next year.
“We have a large contingent of Hispanic and Spanish speaking people, Spanish-only speaking people and students in our district,” Cronk said. “Our teachers were finding it difficult to have meaningful conversations with those students.
“We began to think, ‘What could we do to help that out?’ One of the things was to provide a conversational Spanish class that was on Zoom.”
Board members also applauded the Anderson High School Band, which recently earned the 2024-2025 ISSMA All-Music Award. The award is given to bands which earn a gold rating at multiple band competitions, such as marching band, concert band and jazz band.
This article appeared in The Herald Bulletin.