Amarillo area Our Town briefs for May 7, 2023
Discovery Center brings back Parents’ Night Out for Mothers’ Day weekend
From 5:30 to 9:30 p.m. on May 12, the Don Harrington Discovery Center's (DHDC) Camp Discovery Staff is offering childcare for children ages 4-11 years old so parents can take the evening off to celebrate Mother’s Day weekend early.
Raising Cane’s will be provided as dinner for those registered. Caregivers are encouraged to register soon as spots are limited, and can do so at DHDC.org.
Parents’ Night Out evening camp will include:
Electrifying Demos
Epic Experiments
Exhibit Exploration
Hands-on learning with qualified educators
Cost for members is $25 for first child, and $20 per additional child, and for non-members, it's $30 for first child and $25 per additional young guest.
Follow The Discovery Center on Facebook, Instagram, and DHDC.org for more information on their community programs amd upcoming day camps.
CNS awards STEM grants to Texas schools
The sky is the limit for science, technology, engineering, and math educational efforts for five schools in the Texas Panhandle.
Through $1,000 grants provided by Consolidated Nuclear Security (CNS), the managing and operating contractor for Pantex, five area schools will soon be advancing STEM education with projects ranging from robotics to drones. These grants fund STEM activities in the classroom and represent one of the many ways Pantex is investing in development of the future workforce. This year’s grant recipients and projects are as follows:
Boys Ranch High School, Becky Gaffney (Teacher 9th-12th grade). Students will use four programmable drone sets to learn piloting, foundations of coding, and how to use the engineering design process to solve real-world challenges. Students will experience the role that technology and automation play in our world, and market themselves and the application of their skills to various career fields.
Clarendon High, Timothy Leeper (Teacher 9th-12th grade). These students will also study drones and learn about education opportunities and occupations related to operating and designing unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). Students will be also be qualified to take the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) Unmanned Aircraft Systems Drone Knowledge Test, receiving a 2-year license for UAV operations in a variety of fields.
Fort Elliott CISD, Tori Coulter (Elementary Technology). This small, rural school has already implemented robotics and engineering into the curriculum, and will use its grant to increase these programs and advance STEM opportunities for upper elementary students. This grant will help purchase coding design skill cards, coding robot sets, and STEM Bins.
Pampa High School, Vanessa Ontiveros (Teacher, 9th-12th grade). This program will instruct students how a computer works and how to repair a Personal Computer. It can be downloaded onto classroom computers, supporting an unlimited number of users. The application will instruct Principles of IT, Computer Maintenance, and Practicum of IT classes, using gamification to apply gaming strategies, improve learning, and create an engaging environment.
Rogers Elementary, AISD, Alma Torrez (STEM Teacher, K-5th grade). The purpose of the project is to offer students more opportunities in critical thinking, problem solving, and creativity. They will be tasked to collaborate with their peers, improve social skills, and work together through engineering and coding challenges. Students will gain knowledge of the four pillars of computation thinking: decomposition, pattern recognition, abstraction, and algorithms.
The goal of the grants is to foster advancement of STEM activities in the classroom and to help develop Pantex’s future workforce. This is the second year that Pantex has offered STEM classroom grants to Amarillo and the top 26 counties of the Texas Panhandle. Dozens of submissions were received and evaluated by a panel of knowledgeable employees at Pantex. The group carefully reviewed all the applications and narrowed the impressive list down in order to recommend the five winners.
“To help increase the number of young men and women entering STEM fields, Pantex has offered region-wide grants for the last couple years,” said Darla Fish, Pantex education outreach specialist. “Often times, these successful students become part of the Pantex workforce as we are continually searching for talented professionals to join us in our ongoing mission of securing the nation. ”
Amarillo Police Department news on academy, memorial ceremony
The 30th Amarillo Police Department Citizens Police Academy graduates were celebrated at a ceremony this week at the Amarillo Civic Center. According to the Amarillo Police Department (APD) in a Facebook post, they "recognized the Amarillo community members who took their time to come and learn about our department. The class runs for 12 weeks and it’s 3 hours each week. We appreciate all of you for your time and dedication."
For anyone who is interested in attending the next Citizens Police Academy, it will begin in September. Follow APD social media for details when it gets closer to the date.
In addition, April 29 and 30 were the dates for the 2023 Texas Peace Officer Memorial ceremony and inductees, which includes officers who all died in the line of duty. Their names are memorialized at the Texas Peace Officer Memorial wall in Austin. Amarillo Police Sergeant Michael David Dunn was added to the memorial this year.
APD Chief Birkenfeld, Assistant Chief Johnson, and the Amarillo Police Department Honor Guard were able to attend alongside Sgt. Dunn’s family to honor him and his service. "Thank you Sgt Dunn for the ultimate sacrifice and we thank your family for allowing us to share during the time we had you as our brother," APD said in a Facebook post.
This article originally appeared on Amarillo Globe-News: Amarillo area Our Town briefs for May 7, 2023
