Welcome to Circle Time, a podcast by South Side Early Learning unpacking the big things you want to know about little learners. From the car seat to the classroom, we're answering your questions on parenting, child development, and early education. I'm Colin Page McGinnis, CEO of South Side Early Learning and your host on the show. In each episode, I'll chat with a friend or two, all of whom just so happen to be experts and leaders in their fields, as we explore all things little sharing them with you in toddler size tidbits. Are you ready to master the first five years? If so, gather round for Circle Time. Stephen White thank you for joining me on Circle Time. I am super excited to have you. It has been, I think, almost a year since you and I have had the chance to actually see each other. We're not face-to-face right now but virtual I think is the best we can come up with. I have a ton of awesome questions that some of our parents and listeners had around STEM and early childhood, but before we jump too far in I was hoping you could introduce yourself. Tell us a little bit about who you are and some of the work that you do.
Stephen White:Well, Colin, first off thanks so much for having me. This is a lot of fun. This is my first visit to Circle Time. I've listened to your podcast and I've got to say that you bring up some really interesting topics for families supporting our youth, so I appreciate your leadership as well. I'm excited to be here. Again I'm Stephen White, I am one of the vice presidents over at COSI, which is the Center of Science and Industry. It's a science center based here in Columbus, Ohio. National science center. In fact we were ranked number one on USA today. Actually during the pandemic. So excited about that. My role here, I oversee areas around strategic initiatives including our education programming here at COSI. But I also oversee our partnerships. We're all about engaging inspiring and transforming lives in our community through STEM. But we do so through partnerships. And so I oversee partnerships around the local state and federal level and science is a personal passion of mine. I'm a first-generation college student. Grew up in the Cincinnati area in the inner city and was blessed to have folks and mentors to help guide me on my journey. Went to The Ohio State University. Go Bucks! For undergraduate and got my graduate degrees in law and public policy and then I spent about 10 years working in DC really on the policy front. Working to the move the needle around the education workforce related topics throughout the community. And then about three years ago I made the transition to COSI! Really with this goal of working with folks like yourself and being boots on the ground to execute programs that we believe are critically important now more than ever as a result of this pandemic.
Colin:I from afar and also knowing you professionally have been really impressed with your work and commitment to reducing poverty education and the education and more broadly the workforce in general which you know are all passions of mine as well. I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about some of the transitions that COSI has made over the past couple of years. I think as the new leadership team came in that I've been really impressed with as a partner to see COSI move from an awesome building which we all love the building the space itself but really moved beyond the walls of the center and start working in the community to advance education workforce, some poverty reduction and increasing opportunities all around STEM. I was hoping you could touch on that just a little bit before we dive into some of these questions.
Stephen White:Absolutely! So COSI has been around for 57 years. We were founded by great icons like the visions of our great John Glenn; astronaut and hometown hero here in Columbus. Sandy Halleck and others. But as you mentioned COSI has transformed over the course of those 57 years and one of the things we did about three years ago is we embarked on a new path, a new journey when we developed a strategic plan called the COSI 5.0 strategic plan. Recognizing that we stood on the shoulders of giants, but also recognizing that candidly the world's changed. And if it's critically important to understand your why and your direction we use the idea of a compass as our guiding sort of tool to help guide us along the way to help us understand our why. And so I mentioned it earlier, our vision and mission is to engage, inspire, and transform by being the best partner in science, technology, and industry learning. That vision and mission came out of that strategic plan. The old one was seven pages long and no one kind of knew what it was. It ended on the word planet earth. Be that as it may one of the things that came out of that strategic plan was a couple of high level points. One was that we were going to ignore the box. When we think about how do we engage our youth in STEM? We were going to build physically beyond the building, so going outside of the building into the community and then serve everybody. From the womb to the tomb because science isn't just for our youngsters it's also for people of all ages lifelong learning. So we did that journey and I'm glad we did it, Colin because during this pandemic we've been closed for 13 months. We're slated to reopen in June. We're excited to reopen but because we had that strategic plan that was our guidepost to help us re-imagine and pivot this thought experiment of what if the building didn't exist? We impact over 1.2 million a year 700,000 come through the physical building. Imagine if that didn't exist, then what? And so we engaged in that over the pandemic.
Colin:Ignoring the boxes is something that South Side also holds near and dear to the work that we do and is also a component of our strategic plan. We added strategic innovation as a component in 2018 when we thought through, much like COSI, what does it mean to be an organization and in the world that's coming, and doing that things like the podcasts were born and some other really cool initiatives and COSI has some really awesome initiatives that I'm hoping we can talk a little bit about because I've been really impressed both before the pandemic with one of them and then during the pandemic with the other. If we could start first because one of our parents were interested, could you tell us a little bit more about the COSI STEM learning lunchboxes? What's the initiative? What's the idea? Is it applicable for K-12, early childhood, teenagers who we working with on the learning lunchboxes?
Stephen White:Thanks Colin. Appreciate that question. When we closed our doors last April, we were all just trying to figure out our direction because school closures were happening across the globe. Families were hungry for content. Everyone was trying to figure it out. And one of the things we activated immediately as we said COSI Wants to be there as a community partner to be able to serve the community and its environment. And so we stood up a bunch of initiatives pretty quickly. We've got great resources like an education advisory commission that helps guide us in a lot of this thinking and so we stood up with digital resources. The website that we would create science content every day for free to deliver to the community that's stuff from your kitchen cabinet. Then we said okay. That's not enough because some people might not have computers and so we looked at the digital divide which is real in our community. Some folks may not have access to a computer or even wifi. But we did look at the Pew data and what the Pew data told us with those families making less than $30,000 a year, 93% of had access to a smartphone. So we built a containing app for that website and that app was built in with offline functionality meaning that you didn't have to have access to the internet in order to use those science resources. But we still knew we were missing people. Maybe they didn't have a smartphone. Maybe they didn't have a computer. So we said we've got to create a physical manifestation of that. We said okay let's create a kit that we could give out to underserved families and youth in our community those that were disproportionately at risk of getting left behind. But here was the unique twist on it, is that we said we need to meet them where they are. And in the middle of a COVID environment. And so we reached out to our partners at the food banks. And we said what if when you're passing out your meals COSI is there standing right next to you passing out science kits at the same time? Hence the name learning lunchboxes. So the idea was simple. The families would pick up their food for the week, they get their science learning for the week as well with this kit so you'd feed hungry lives and feed hungry minds. And I'm excited to share today Colin, that we've surpassed over 25,000 of these learning lunch boxes. We're on pace now to distribute over a hundred thousand in 2021 alone across five states. And the reason for that is, I'll just be candid, it's the demand. Families want the engaging science content, the hands-on content. You make things fun. You COSI-fy it. And that's what these kits are all about. Hands on informal learning to primarily target grades K through eight but now we have an early childhood version of the learning lunchboxes that are going out to our little ones to help fuel their curiosity at that critical early age as well.
Colin:That's awesome! And I'm sure I will be finding my way into one of the learning lunchboxes for in particular the one for our youngest learners. But I know a question that's popping into my head and I'm sure has popped into some of our listeners heads from hearing you talk is what's actually in one of these learning lunchboxes? One. But then more broadly what makes up good STEM programming for young learners? And it doesn't necessarily have to be early childhood. But what makes a good STEM learning, which I know COSI is a leader in.
Stephen White:Absolutely. Inside the box itself you're going to have five different activities. We include everything in there from batteries to binoculars. And you're going to get a nice activity book that guides the storytelling. The storytelling process that is meeting them at their age level from a reading comprehension standpoint. Now they are intended to be done together with their parents to help guide them in that or perhaps there's a mentor or an older sibling that's there to help guide them along the way but we do want to meet them at their curiosity level. So you asked a great question. This question of what makes up good STEM content. And one of the things I would say to that is you want to make sure it's fun. You want to make sure that it's engaging content that fuels the desire to want to say Hey I can do this! Not only can I do this, but it's fun and I want to do it. Right? To help open up their eyes around what that future looks like. The other thing I had to submit to you too, Colin, is that this idea of delivering the STEM content at the level of your audience. So I'm a big fan of servant leadership. It's something I teach over at Ohio State from a leadership component when I submit to you that the components that make up servant leadership can help fuel learning. Servant learning. And what do I mean by that? What I mean by servant learning is put yourselves in the positions of those individuals that want get that STEM content and we'll develop that content in such a way that you're relating directly to them to be able to use that content. So that's how I view it. We want to make it hands on. We want to make it fun. But to deliver it at the level that we believe where people live, learn, and lounge will make them want to engage even more.
Colin:If there's anything else you want to close with on the STEM side of the house, just words of encouragement for parents or educators. Ways that they can connect in I want to give you that opportunity as well.
Stephen White:Colin, I'll close with this, a huge thank you to you and your team for the amazing work that you are doing day in and day out to support youth, our little ones, and their families. One of the things coming out of this pandemic that we believe firmly on is that we're all in this together. The pandemic has been very challenging across the board. But one of the things we cannot lose sight of, is that education particularly at that early age is a critical human service. And it doesn't stop because of a pandemic. It doesn't stop because you might have challenges associated with you. You have to fuel that learning at that early age. And Colin, you're doing it every day. We're thankful to be your partners thank you so much for having me on here today. And look forward to continuing to do more great work as well.
Colin:Thank you so much for joining me on Circle Time today, Stephen, and thank you to COSI for being such a great partner of South Side Early Learning. It has been a pleasure to have you on this episode.
Stephen White:Thank you. Colin appreciate it. Appreciate all you do.
Colin:What questions do you want to ask our experts on Circle Time? Join the conversation by using the hashtag #CircleTimePod, tweeting us @CircleTimePod or by visiting circletimepod.com. If you liked this episode, be sure to rate and subscribe to the show on Spotify, apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts and share this and all of your favorite episodes with others. From South Side Early Learning i'm Colin Page McGinnis and this is Circle Time. We'll see you in the next episode.