Westfield School holds STEM camp

The Westfield School had 50 students in the Houston County area attend their STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) camp last week.

Wendy Bryan, Westfield’s lower school technology director, said there was so much interest in the camp that they also had a waiting list. It was held from 9 a.m. to noon Monday through Thursday and was open to the general public. She said this was their first year hosting the camp and they hope to continue it.

Bryan said students learned about different sciences and technology. She said she had a lot of help from Kelsey Gilliam, Westfield’s technology specialist, who is her co-director. She also had help from Gilliam’s younger sister, Kinsley; her daughter, Laura Liz Bryan; and Valerie McLure, a Westfield alumnus who just graduated from Berry College.

Bryan said McLure, a former tennis and cross-country athlete of hers, comes back almost every summer to help her.

“She is very loyal to the school and very loyal to me,” she said. “She helps no matter what I need.”

McLure, who the younger students like to call “Dr. Val” since she’s currently in medical school at the Medical College of Georgia, graduated in 2013 from The Westfield School. She said she enjoyed her four years there and felt that she needed to give back to other students.

McLure said she grew up loving science and math. With her graduating from Berry College with a major in chemistry and minor in math, she feels that it’s so important to pursue science and math at a young age. She said it can be fun and open up a lot of job opportunities.

Bryan said the STEM camp gets the students involved in technology. There were different stations for the students to move through in the school’s media center, which was transformed last summer. They each had a different project to work through, including building bridges to see which one will support the most weight by using only popsicle sticks and tape, how to propel a car using only a balloon and string, building a basketball goal using a cup that they have to cut up and string and a ping pong ball, making clay that will react with vinegar and how to use binary code.

Bryan said the camp provides additional learning for the lower school students that they otherwise wouldn’t learn about in a technology class.

“The world is going to engineering and technology and all of the careers are geared toward those fields. It’s good to immerse the kids in something along those lines. I don’t think that people realize how much the kids love something like this,” she said.

“They have had the best time,” Bryan said. “They are so smart. It just blows me away.”

She said STEM is incredibly and increasingly important “to incorporate this in your curriculum.” She said the students were even teaching her things she didn’t know.

“I enjoy spending time with them,” Bryan said. “This is a great group of kids.”

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