Middle School Story Archives - West Virginia Public Broadcasting

Pumpkin Drop Brings Seasonal Fun To STEM Education

Pumpkins are an iconic image of Halloween and fall. An annual event at West Virginia University turns them into a learning experience students won’t soon forget.

More than 1,000 students from across West Virginia and western Pennsylvania tried to keep their gourds intact this past Friday, Oct. 25, as they sailed more than 100 feet through the air at the 35th annual Pumpkin Drop at West Virginia University. On the line are cash prizes: $100 for first, $50 for second and $25 third place as well as bragging rights for the best protected pumpkin.

Students like eighth grader Luke Moore from Tyler Consolidated Middle School form teams with classmates to try and create a structure that will protect their pumpkin from the drop. Moore said his team tried an unconventional shape to absorb the force of an 11-story fall off the WVU Engineering Sciences Building.

“We built an upside down pyramid so it can go down easier,” Moore said “And if it hits the tip, the energy is dispersed through the top of the pyramid.”

Ultimately the design wasn’t successful, although another team of Moore’s classmates did tie for third this year. While a smashed pumpkin isn’t great, Moore and his teammates are in good spirits.

”The people here are really great,” he said. “And the fact that we get to do a school project and then come to a school like this and get to throw stuff off the building.”

Teachers and students alike are energized by the event. Melissa Courtright, a seventh and eighth grade gifted teacher at Mountaineer Middle School in Morgantown, said the event promotes a lot of engineering design and creativity from students. They must adhere to certain rules like using a pumpkin with a diameter of at least 10 inches, and a total structure weight of no more than 50 pounds to protect it during the freefall.

A package falls from the WVU Engineering Sciences Building into the tree line Oct. 25, 2024.

*Chris Schulz/West Virginia Public Broadcasting*

“Our kids have spent the last week or so developing and building enclosures for their pumpkins to protect them from this huge drop, from the roof to the ground, and trying to get them as aerodynamic as possible, so that they can also land within this target,” Courtright said.

She said the event is a great and unique educational opportunity, both before and after.

“We just love doing the event. And we even like the after, where we do a full, deep debrief with our kids. They have to know, did their pumpkin survive? How far was it from the target? Like, what could they have changed? And so they learn from the experience, and that’s what we hope that they get out of it, is that learning experience.”

Scott Wayne, an associate engineering professor at WVU, was a student at the university when the drop started in the 1980s.

“When we first started, it was a fun competition for engineering students,” he said. “Our freshman engineering students got involved, and then we started inviting the middle school and high school kids, and they’ve really kept it going.”

He is now the faculty advisor of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers student chapter which sponsors the pumpkin drop. Wayne sees in the pumpkin drop not only an opportunity to learn about physics, science and math, but also for younger students to start thinking about their academic futures.

“It allows them to come to WVU campus and to see the campus and hopefully start them thinking about college careers in the science, math and engineering fields,” he said.

Wayne points out that the event serves two good purposes.

“All of the entry fee proceeds go to support families whose children are being treated here at Ruby Memorial Hospital or Mon General Hospital, and it’s just a great educational learning opportunity for these students.”

The West Virginia University Benjamin M. Statler College of Engineering and Mineral Resources welcomes students and teachers from across West Virginia for the 35th annual Pumpkin Drop Friday, October 25, 2024. The event features design plans from students K-12th grade who see their entries dropped from the roof of the Engineering Sciences Building.

*Jennifer Shephard/WVU Photo*

Adrienne Titus is a parent of students at Covenant Christian School in Morgantown, one of whose teams tied for third with Tyler Consolidated. She said part of the appeal of the pumpkin drop event is bringing so many different schools and students together.

“It’s great for the kids to be able to come together from all different areas and cheer each other on. It just brings a sense of unity to all the schools, I think, which is really good,” Titus said.

According to Titus, students learn more than math and engineering in the process of protecting their pumpkins. Almost all drop contestants submit a collaborative build with at least one other student, requiring collaboration on design, material choice and the actual assembly.

“It’s just getting them to work together as a team, which I think is the best thing, because everyone’s got different ideas, and they have to come together and agree on one,” she said.

The importance of teamwork is a lesson the students themselves are quick to see the value in.

“Be wise of the people who you choose partners with,” Moore said.

Now, pumpkins on neighbors’ stoops and steps will be a reminder for students of their hard-earned physics lessons. And perhaps inspiration for next year’s drop.

A pumpkin drop at the WVU Engineering Sciences Building Oct. 25, 2024.

Middle School Career And Technical Training Hopes To Improve Student Engagement, Employment

“I’ve seen kids go to college and have no idea what they want to be and go get a political science degree, then they can’t get a job,” Hardesty said. “I am sick and tired of a counselor telling a kid in the welding program ‘You don’t want to be a welder’ when he can go out and make $40 an hour and get hired today.”

Career and technical education (CTE) programs for middle schoolers are growing across the state, and educators say they’re improving academic outcomes.

Passed in 2020, House Bill 4790 allowed career and technical education to be taught in middle school. Programs range from the “Discover Your Future” program – which introduces middle schoolers to future career opportunities across 16 career clusters – to the “Empowerment Collaborative” which focuses on content and career exploration through community-based, student-driven projects.

Clinton Burch, technical education officer for the West Virginia Department of Education, told the state Board of Education Wednesday that 56 percent of the state’s middle school population have participated in a career exploration course.

“We have a lot of stuff going on with CTE, a lot of expansion happening with your support, a lot of classes offering,” he said. “Currently you have 30,786 students that have participated in a career exploration course.”

Board President Paul Hardesty thanked Burch for his work, and expressed his frustration at hearing of students being guided away from trades and towards college.

Burch highlighted the importance of showing students and their families the variety of opportunities available to them early so that they stay motivated and engaged in their education.

“It’s this idea of actually educating parents as early as elementary school on the benefits of career technical education, how it aligns very robustly with academics and by students exploring various careers at an early age, how it’s going to set them up for that success, so that you don’t have students who are just looking at college as the only option,” he said.

In response to a question from board member Debra Sullivan about the promotion of teaching as a career option, Burch highlighted the work of the new Grow Your Own program, but also stressed the need for service personnel in schools across the state.

“We did a survey a few years ago, and you’ve heard me say this before, the majority of kids, over 98 percent of them, actually did not want to move more than 50 miles from their hometown,” he said. “Who’s the largest employer in most of our hometowns? It’s our Board of Education and they’re always looking just as we are short on teachers that are always looking for service personnel.”

W.Va. Middle Schoolers Will See More CTE Opportunities This Fall

Rick Gillman, director of career technical education at the West Virginia Department of Education, said that while CTE programs exist in many counties, he and his staff wanted to develop something for all the middle school teachers in the state.

A push to get more career technical education (CTE) experiences in West Virginia middle schools will launch in the new school year.

West Virginia lawmakers on the Joint Standing Committee on Education received an update Monday about the initiative.

Rick Gillman, director of career technical education at the West Virginia Department of Education, told the committee that while these types of programs exist in many counties, he and his staff wanted to develop something for all the middle school teachers in the state.

“There’s always been career exploration, and counties can do things locally, but we wanted to actually develop a course that counties can use that covers all nationally recognized career clusters,” Gillman said. “[Bringing] CTE into the middle schools, and we wanted this to be hands-on.”

Gillman said he worked with elementary and middle school teachers across the state to develop the course called Discover Your Future CTE Exploratory Program. It offers learning opportunities within all 16 of the nationally recognized career clusters.

These clusters cover a variety of possible career paths. They include:

Agriculture, Food & Natural Resources
Architecture & Construction
Arts, A/V Technology & Communications
Business Management & Administration
Education & Training
Finance
Government & Public Administration
Health Science
Hospitality & Tourism
Human Services
Information Technology
Law, Public Safety, Corrections & Security
Manufacturing
Marketing
Science, Technology, Engineering & Mathematics (STEM)
Transportation, Distribution & Logistics

“We want [students] to take these career experiences, this career exploration, and help them try to answer the question: what do I want to do in high school? What do I want to do after high school? What do I want to do when I grow up?” Gillman said.
Each cluster takes two weeks and has four to five modules that a teacher will go through with their students. Each cluster also has a designated coordinator that a teacher can contact if they need advice or guidance on teaching the cluster.

There are more than 80 separate lesson plans available, according to Gillman.

“We wanted to provide flexibility in delivery, depending on the students’ needs in the county,” Gillman said. “And any West Virginia certified middle school teacher can teach this course. So a county doesn’t have to worry about staffing, adding someone else new. Any teacher they have on staff can teach this.”

Gillman said 48 middle schools in 31 counties have signed up for training this summer, but training is not mandatory.

The new course has been in development since October 2021.

Bill Restricting Transgender Female Athletes In W.Va. Heads To Governor

A bill to restrict transgender girls and women from playing female sports is on its way to Gov. Jim Justice.

The West Virginia House of Delegates voted to accept the Senate’s version of HB 3293 on Friday evening.

The upper chamber’s version gives female student athletes, from middle school to college, the option to sue their county board of education, or their state higher education institution, if they feel there’s been a violation of this bill by having to play with or against a transgender girl or woman.

If the transgender student is a minor, the identity of that student would remain private and anonymous.

The Senate also amended the bill to clarify that the legislation will no longer “restrict the eligibility of any student to participate” in male athletic teams, or those that are co-ed, as long as they “try out and possess the requisite skill to make the team.”

More than two dozen state legislatures including West Virginia have introduced similar legislation this year. West Virginia House Democrats on Friday spoke against the effort.

“It attempts to harm children,” said Del. Joey Garcia, D-Marion. “It ostracizes some of our most vulnerable children in the state of West Virginia.”

Garcia also questioned if this could hamper the state’s tourism efforts, referring to an incident in 2016 when the National Collegiate Athletic Association pulled its planned championship events from North Carolina venues, after the state imposed bathroom restrictions on its transgender residents and visitors. The NCAA returned to North Carolina after the state partially repealed the ban in 2017.

“They had to go back and fix it,” Garcia said. “They had to go back and fix it because they actually cared about tourism.”

Others who have opposed the bill, including Sen. Ryan Weld, R-Brooke, have said provisions for college athletes in the Senate’s version of HB 3293 conflict with the NCAA’s policy enacted in 2011, which allows transgender women to play in their sports.

“I don’t think that people who have a distinct physical, physiological advantage over members of an opposite sex should be allowed to play a sport with them. It’s unfair,” Weld said Thursday on the Senate floor. “But by including higher education, we’ve added another layer of complexity to an issue that is already extremely complex, extremely difficult.”

Meanwhile, Senate Education Chair Patricia Rucker, R-Jefferson, said Thursday that she believes the bill would bring the state into further compliance with Title IX, a law preventing sex-based discrimination, including discrimination against women, in schools and related programs.

“[This] is for the policy of helping our girls, helping our women, have the opportunity. That is what Title IX was about.” Rucker said. “This bill does nothing more than codify what is already well established under federal and state common law: that biological females, and biological males are not similarly situated in certain circumstances, and one of those circumstances is in sports.”

Supporters of the legislation in the House on Friday agreed with Rucker. “This conversation has to do with one thing and one thing only — girls in sports,” said Del. Roger Conley, R-Wood. “Why is it fair that my granddaughter would be on a basketball team with someone that was born a biological male, gets plowed over because they’re much faster, much stronger, [and] gets her leg broken?”

Before the bill reached either floor, however — in both its current version and earlier as it passed the House in March — lawmakers heard testimony from advocacy organizations like the Human Rights Campaign, that say transgender women are just as diverse as other women when it comes to body type and skill.

“They have a variety of different talents. They have a variety of different interests,” said Human Rights Campaign State Legislative Director Cathryn Oakley during a meeting with the House Judiciary Committee in February. “Some of them will be tall, some of them are short, some of them are fast, some of them are slow, some of them will have excellent hand eye coordination, others of them will not.”

While lawmakers who support the bill haven’t publicly identified any situations where schools have had problems with transgender athletes in West Virginia, the bill’s opponents have referred to sources highlighting bullying against transgender youth.

That includes a report by the Trevor Project mentioned last year in Forbes magazine, which said nearly half of the country’s transgender youth have considered suicide in the last year.

“This legislation, it’s just one more nail in the coffin for those students,” said Del. Cody Thompson, D-Randolph, who is gay. “I don’t think anyone in here has ever contemplated suicide for being straight. Definitely crossed my mind. But this bill, it’s unfortunate that this is where we’re at right now, and that we’re going to put into law something that’s going to just tell these young people that you don’t matter. We don’t care.”

Del. Danielle Walker, D-Monongalia, agreed and said she was “sorry” on behalf of the legislature.

“Trans youth are still youth. Children are still children,” said Walker. “Today, I feel like a bully on children … I apologize to my constituents … I stand with you today in front of my colleagues.”

The House voted 80-20 on the measure, and the bill now heads to the governor for consideration. West Virginia Public Broadcasting reached out to the bill’s lead sponsor, Del. Caleb Hanna, R-Nicholas, for comment, but he did not respond before this story was published.

Hanna has not spoken publicly on the floor or in committee on the issue.

House Communications Director Ann Ali told West Virginia Public Broadcasting that because the bill originated in the House Education Committee, Hanna was listed as its lead sponsor due to him serving as committee vice chair that day.

Want Students to Achieve Academically? Provide Mental Health Services

Of the 718 public schools in West Virginia, 129 have school-based health centers (although note that some elementary/middle or middle/high schools share a center). Just over 30 percent of those, including Riverside High School in Belle, have mental health services.

“I think it’s [the mental health services] a good thing because a lot of teenagers struggle with depression or something wrong with them – they think that – especially in adolescence, the way the brain develops and all that stuff,” said Lillian Steel-Thomas, a senior at Riverside.

Steel-Thomas has had, as she calls it, “a tough life.” Over the past 18 years, she has lived with every relative who would take her in. She has also attended six or seven different schools. Steel-Thomas is currently living with her boyfriend’s parents – the most stable situation, she said, she has had in a while.

“Most of the problems they end up going away after you get older, but sometimes they don’t and getting help young helps you not have all kinds of horrible issues when you grow up,” she said.

Steel-Thomas has been diagnosed with depression and anxiety. She is one of seven students I talked to from three schools who have similar challenges. Most said having a therapist available at school is invaluable. Two young women from Greenbrier East High School said they wish they had access to one (they actually do – they just didn’t know about it).

“For many, many years focus on academics – many school leaders didn’t see the relationship between mental health and academics,” said Barbara Brady, School Counseling Coordinator with the WV Department of Education. “There are many, many studies saying academics impact mental health and mental health impacts academics.”

According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, one in five children ages 13-18 have or will have a serious mental health condition. West Virginia currently has very little data about the state’s childhood mental health and none that was publically available.

Riverside is Steel-Thomas’ second high school. The first did not have mental health services. I asked her if having mental health services available at school made any difference to her grades. The short answer? Absolutely.

“I have good grades now because I can study, but before I couldn’t because it wasn’t that great,” said Steel-Thomas. “Where I had bad grades they believed I wasn’t a good student or a good person and I told them I was having a horrible time, told them all kinds of personal things and they pretty much told me to my face that I was lying.”

0119MentalHealth.mp3

Full audio story as heard on West Virginia Morning

Steel-Thomas failed all her classes that first year of high school except for the two that were graded based on “participation.” She said she thinks she was truant about half the time.

“I just didn’t feel like going to school anymore,” she said. “What’s the point of going if nobody cares? And my grades are bad anyway and it sucks being home, but at least I can go jogging or something.”

Being at Riverside, she said, is a world of difference. She feels more supported by both teachers and administrators who in turn, she said, seem to feel more supported by having referral services available on site.

The on-site services also mean she doesn’t have to leave school for appointments or make up hours of work. She just shows a teacher her appointment card, then heads down the hall to the clinic waiting room. It’s an envelop of support that for most of her life she hasn’t gotten from home.

Cases like Steel-Thomas’ seem like a success. But administrators like Brady are quick to point out that if schools are not creating an overall better environment for students, placing therapists in school will not be enough.

“It’s critical to have those universal preventions, those universal supports. Teaching all students the skills they need to succeed, teaching all students anger management skills, teaching all students conflict resolution s

kills, social skills, so on and so forth.”

The idea is to slowly change the way schools think about mental health and behavioral support. It’s not a one size fits all prescription. Schools in Cabell County have very different challenges than schools in McDowell. These schools need to have programs available that they can pick and choose from that work for their school at this time.

A complementary story, on the programs currently available to schools, will air Monday during West Virginia Morning.

Appalachia Health News is a project of West Virginia Public Broadcasting, with support from the Benedum Foundation.

Students in Putnam County to Participate in Budget Simulation

The West Virginia Treasurer’s Office will host its first county-wide Get a Life budget simulation over the next two days in Putnam County.

The program for eighth grade students in Putnam County will show them how a budget is put together. The two-day event, Tuesday and Wednesday at the Navy Reserve Center, will also teach kids the importance of properly handling money.

More than 700 eighth grade students have been invited to participate in the financial education activity entitled Get a Life. It’s an interactive activity that engages students with realistic family budget scenarios.

Students from all four middle schools will participate. It’s the first time the activity has been organized on a county-wide level. More than 50 community volunteers, including several mayors and other officials are expected to take part.