Despite not receiving the level of expected support, the Buxton STEM Club is pushing through to ensure it is positioned to take advantage of the opportunities offered by Guyana’s booming Information Communication Technology (ICT) industry.
The Club was started in February of this year as part of the initiative to push STEM education.
The Club was launched at the Buxton Secondary School with the students being really excited to learn programming and robotics. According to STEMGuyana Coach Horace Mosely, they have six active students in the Club and they have all been exposed to Scratch Coding as well as robotics building.
Horace, being a Buxtonian, said he was extremely excited to be part of a team that was pushing the STEM initiative in his community. When speaking about the impact of the Club, he said that he has been approached by a number of organisations to aid them in the establishment of their own STEM Clubs.
“It actually has a great impact, because, currently, I have over four places that reached out to me in Buxton to start STEM groups. They will be starting STEM groups and this is Churches and we have two other youth fellowships and two other Clubs. It’s technology, and children and technology is moving really fast right now,” Horace said.
Like every new initiative, there are quite often challenges and for the Buxton STEM Club the challenge was the lack of support – lack of support from the teachers at the Buxton Secondary School and facilities, given the lack of commitment. Coach Aisha Peters said that the lack of support resulted in them having to move over to Melanie in order for them to complete the tasks set out by STEMGuyana.
“Parents didn’t get their permission slip in time after we would have dropped it off and so we didn’t get much support there when it comes to permission to have the kids go over Melanie to have the project completed. Well, the thing is most of the kids we worked with is from Buxton, so the facility was a big deal and even though they had, we didn’t had like teachers who were willing to stay back and help us out with gaining access to the room and things like that. We had 10 students and more were interested, but the [lack of] access to facilities, that caused us not to accommodate all of them,” Aisha explained.
At the end, however, they were able to complete the tasks assigned by STEMGuyana in just three days. There were times when the team lost motivation, but as Aisha explained the level of determination exhibited by the students was the driving force.
“Determination to learn because they were very involved and they were texting and calling parents to get permission and to see how they can get out and all the different things, so it was their determination that gave us the courage to go forward in aiding and assisting in completing the challenges. We started late and then they finished all four challenges within three days, so the kids actually motivated us when we were not like feeling it, because without their support we could not have made it.”
The aim of the Buxton STEM Club is to go bigger and better. The Coaches want to get the school involved as well as the teachers. The immediate plan is to raise funds to purchase their own Robotics Kit for the children, since the one they used in the competition was loaned by STEMGuyana. (Guyana Times Sunday Magazine)
