Lego Education president fosters Putnam partnership

By Kirk Collier 

Special to the Daily News

Victor Saejis of Denmark, president of Lego Education, and his national and state leadership team toured two Putnam County schools Thursday to see how Lego’s curriculum is being used to meet the goals of the district’s science, technology, engineering and math initiative.  

Superintendent Rick Surrency met Saejis at a conference in New Orleans and invited him to visit Putnam County to see how Lego Education is being used throughout the district. Saejis visited as part of a multi-state tour.

“Meeting with the international, national and state leaders of Lego Education in Putnam County was an exciting experience for my staff and me,” Surrency said. “Our school district’s K-12 STEM initiative is very forward-thinking and is gaining attention from partners both in the U.S. and abroad. Putnam County students will benefit from our strategic partnerships for years to come.”

Tour guides from the school district were Melissa Coleman, executive director of the district’s federal programs and instructional acceleration; Michael Helms, STEM specialist; and Lorena Dominey, a STEM resource teacher.

The district’s STEM initiative aims to inspire students to explore STEM careers through rigorous, engaging instruction and to provide STEM learning opportunities to all students in all grades.

“Your vision is our vision,” Saejis told Surrency. “I feel like we are joined at the hip.”

At Kelley Smith Elementary School, the Lego group observed Brad Gardner’s sixth grade STEM computer science class demonstrate how they programmed Lego Spike Prime robots to sense colors when interacting with other robots.

Students and visitors also watched the SpaceX launch that resulted in the rocket’s explosion, with Gardner using it to stress the importance of the vocabulary word of the day: iteration, as in repeating computational procedures applied to the result of a previous application as a means of obtaining the solution to a problem.

In Suzanne Buckles’ second grade STEM class, students demonstrated how they used Lego Education’s BricQ Motion Essential to design levers that explore the motion of a basketball when scoring a three-point throw with the goal of using the data to score a perfect basket every time. 

The group also saw Bobbi Okeson’s sixth grade Cambridge math class students determining mean, median and mode and explaining their reasoning.

Then it was on to Crescent City Junior-Senior High School, where Donna Kruithof’s junior high computer science class students were creating structures with Lego Spike Prime using the process of design thinking. The visitors also visited Damon Frazee’s algebra class, which was studying data analysis and probability.

At the C.L. Overturf Jr. District Center, Surrency and Kathy Schofield, executive director of Northeast Florida Regional STEM2 Hub and the district’s lead STEM partner, provided data demonstrating the impact STEM is having on Putnam’s students.

“I’m incredibly inspired by what is happening with STEM in the Putnam school district, by how Putnam is bringing STEM to all classes, all grades, all schools and how it’s positively impacting the students one by one,” Saejis said.