For whatever STEM concept an instructor is looking to teach, STEM Sports pairs it in its curriculum with a sports-related activity or exercise that illustrates the concept.
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Courtesy STEM Sports
Haley MacLean taught a STEM Sports class at Mesquite Junior High School in Gilbert before leaving to work for the company, which is based in Phoenix. (Courtesy STEM Sports)
Education
Program uses sports to teach STEM concepts to students
Posted
I still have really great ties with a lot of my students, but just the traction with moving to this full time, my reach can be so much greater because it’s not just 150 kids. I’m working with teachers countrywide,”
Haley MacLean, STEM Sports
Wide STEM of Sports
Wide STEM of Sports
STEM Sports curriculum includes 11 different sports outside their multisport kits.
Haley MacLean was teaching math four years ago at Mesquite Junior High School in Gilbert, always an engagement challenge and one she was looking to address.
“I was looking for something just different, something to excite them, something that they would love,” said MacLean, then going by her maiden name of Mercy. “And as I’m literally thinking about this, (a student) who I was teaching at the time comes up to me, shows me her computer, and it was a picture of her. She goes, ‘Miss Mercy, look at this.’ And she’s like, ‘STEM sports, I think you would really like this.’
“And I start looking into it, and I’m like, ‘What in the world? This is the coolest thing in the world.’”
The student was the niece of Jeff Golner, president and CEO of STEM Sports, and she had done promo photos for her uncle on the company, an education consultant group in Phoenix that develops science, technology, engineering, mathematics curriculum with a sports theme.
MacLean, who played all the sports growing up and volleyball in college, did really like it.
“My kids love sports, so I know it will be such an easy avenue to get them excited about math, (which) was my concern at that time,” she said. “And then it eventually evolved to where I was all STEM concepts I wanted them to know a little bit more about.”
MacLean said the curriculum proved to be wildly successful in engaging students, even those who were not sports fans. Essentially, for whatever STEM concept that the instructor is looking to teach, the company pairs it in the curriculum with a sports-related activity or exercise that illustrates the concept.
MacLean began teaching a STEM class at Mesquite Junior High, and she even brought in Gilbert Public Schools Superintendent Shane McCord to observe a class.
“He loved it,” MacLean said. “And I knew he was a baseball fan so we did one of our baseball lessons, and he just came in and he wrote the greatest reflection letter for me, and he was just like, ‘This was so incredible. The kids were just so engaged. They were learning. They were active, the collaboration. This is just the coolest thing I’ve ever seen.’ So it was really great to have him come in and see it.”
MacLean taught the STEM class for three years before leaving GPS last May to take a job full time with STEM Sports.
For MacLean, it was not about getting out of the classroom because she loved teaching. But this represented a chance to extend her reach.
“I was impacting, call it 150 kids every year that I’ve been doing it, and I loved it,” she said. “I still have really great ties with a lot of my students, but just the traction with moving to this full time, my reach can be so much greater because it’s not just 150 kids. I’m working with teachers countrywide, I’m working with programs countrywide, writing the curriculum that they’re using, supporting the teachers that are doing it. My reach just grew exponentially. Moving into this role was really the big pusher for me to leave.”
A student measures the velocity of a baseball thrown by a fellow student. (Courtesy STEM Sports)
Looks at the construction of different kinds of ball is popular with students, MacLean said. (Independent Newsmedia/Tom Blodgett)
Students work on an exercise involving the construction of balls. (Courtesy STEM Sports)
Haley MacLean goofs around with one of the golf clubs used for the class in a storeroom for class equipment. (Independent Newsmedia/Tom Blodgett)
The company offers a broad swath of sports, each with a manual full of lessons. (Independent Newsmedia/Tom Blodgett)
A wall in the STEM Sports office shows off the different copyrights the company holds for its manuals. (Independent Newsmedia/Tom Blodgett)
MacLean’s title is education and curriculum specialist. Since coming on board, she has collaborated with Chief Value Officer Sean Barton, also a former educator, in writing curriculum for three more sports, hockey, tennis and bike. And coming soon: pickleball. It brings to 16 the number of curricula offered, including a few multisport ones for different age levels. Most of the curriculum is geared toward third through eighth graders, but there is one multisport for kindergarten through second grade.
It is supplemental curriculum, MacLean said, but in her experience, she started using it once a week and eventually expanded to where it became a class and she was using it every day.
“It became something where it was every day this is just going to be our focus,” she said. “We’re going to rotate between sports, we’re going to rotate between this week, we’ll focus on science, this week we’ll focus on engineering. It’s very versatile to whatever you’re able to do, essentially.”
Sports fit in well with STEM topics, too, MacLean said.
“Right now we’re doing a really big push for fantasy football, which kids love — so much math behind fantasy football,” she said
Basketball is often a favorite. It is an example of how the curriculum can combine physical activity with learning an academic skill.
“Them going out shooting free throws,” MacLean said, “calculating their free throw percentage, using that to predict, ‘OK, you just shot 10 free throws. You made 6 out of 10. So if you were going to shoot, let’s say 100 free throws, how many would you expect to make?’ Those type of just reasoning skills that if you put it on a math worksheet, they’re like, ‘I don’t know. I don’t care.’ But if you ask them about their basketball skills, they’re like, ‘Well, I’d make about 60 out of 100. I’m pretty good.’”
Golf is another popular sport for students to delve into, to MacLean’s surprise.
“I was hesitant to do it at first,” she said. “I was like, ‘I know my kids, I know what sports they like.’ And golf definitely wasn’t one that came to mind, but it always ended up being their absolute favorite.
“The lessons are just so incredible. We talk about the sustainability of a golf course, which especially in Arizona, it’s such a huge question. Well, how much water do you really have? Yeah, that type of stuff is awesome.”
The golf lessons also involve them going into club selection, trying out different clubs and learning about the angles of the club heads for different shots.
“So it’s just them really exploring it, which is just such a freaking fun thing to do,” MacLean said. “I love it.”
It also is easy to tie the lessons to possible careers, like in golf for course maintenance or course or club design, MacLean said.
It can open eyes in other ways, too. MacLean likes the capstone lesson for the softball curriculum, which is about women in sports and in STEM careers.
STEM Sports originated out of the BMX scene in 2016. Golner purchased it from Jon Schmeider of the Huddle Up Group. Barton said he came on board in 2019 and began to rewrite much of the curriculum along with Rachel Kissner, who had taught in the Pendergast Elementary School District.
STEM Sports supports everything from single classrooms or grade levels at a school to whole districts. It is even being done at some community centers or YMCAs. The company offers teachers everything from just the manuals with lessons to whole sport kits that include all the sports and academic equipment needed for the lessons.
The price can be steep from $749 for just the lesson manual to $3,995 for the sports kit for STEM Bike, though a few sports kits are priced as low as $1,275.
The price point is high enough that MacLean admits she would not be able to afford it on her own without support from her principal, a grant or a donor.
“But the great thing is it’s something that can be used year after year,” MacLean said. “So for me it was like, ‘Yeah, the upfront cost might not be what I wanted, but when I look at the fact that it’s something I can use the next 10 years, and it’s like, ‘OK, I paid a hundred bucks a year to use that — perfect.”
Barton said the curriculum does a nice job of bringing together STEM for the student and sports for the athlete.
“’Bookworms,’ sometimes we call them, aren’t really athletes, and then the athlete isn’t necessarily that strong a student,” he said. “This does a nice job of bridging that gap through hands-on learning. And that really does generate value.”
Tom Blodgett can be reached by email at tblodgett@iniusa.org or follow him @sp_blodgett on X. We would like to invite our readers to submit their civil comments, pro or con, on this issue. Email AZOpinions@iniusa.org.
Raised in Arizona, Tom Blodgett has spent more than 35 years in journalism in Arizona and joined Independent Newsmedia in July 2022 to launch the Gilbert edition. He is a graduate of Arizona State University, where he served as an instructional professional in the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication from 2005-19 and remains editorial adviser to The State Press, the university's independent student media outlet.
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