Indy 500 comes to Millersburg
Mar. 8—MILLERSBURG — An Indy 500 car was parked out front of Millersburg Elementary School Wednesday morning, for fourth-grade eyes only.
It's the culmination of months of hard work in the classroom. The school was selected this year to be a part of the 500 Festival & Indianapolis 500 Education Program presented by Indiana University Health.
"It really just seems to be a really good overall view for the kids of how the whole process works and how people work together with some real specific career specialties to be a part of a bigger team," said Millersburg Elementary Principal Wade Jagger.
The free program is a combination of in-class curriculum including language arts, health, math, science, social studies, visual arts, and physical education; and either a mobile study trip or trip to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. The school has traveled to Indianapolis twice but due to transportation shortages, Millersburg Elementary School elected to take advantage of the mobile study trip option. Schools who are accepted are selected by lottery.
For students, the learning begins in January with a curriculum provided by the Indy 500 team, related to the industry, and supportive of the fourth-grade state standards. It includes history, writing, questioning, math and inquiry.
The program at Millersburg is the passion project of fourth-grade teacher Tracy Zook, who learned about it from another district fourth-grade teacher. For several years, Zook has supported the grade as they explore the history and implementation of the Indy 500 through curriculum, even making trips to Indianapolis historically to learn more and view practice runs in real-time. The program is specifically curated to follow alongside the fourth-grade state curriculum.
"It fits great into our curriculum," Zook said.
Since its inception in 2004, the statewide program has impacted more than 400,000 students in 17,000 classrooms. In 2022 alone, 282 schools' fourth graders participated.
"Getting the students to think about the application of these concepts is really valuable," Jagger said. "It's cross-curricular application."
Students who've been through the program before at Millersburg or one of Fairfield Community Schools' two other elementary schools can then use that information as they enter middle school in the skilled trades program.
"We actually have kids in our middle school that are designing prototypes for certain products as a business concept," Jagger said. "And so this is a great example of a program that really gets kids to think outside of the textbook and the general four walls of the classroom and apply it in ways outside of academic school. I think it's a great opportunity to give kids context before they ever get into the middle school grade levels where they're starting to dabble a little bit more into some of the skilled trades concepts."
Indy Show Car Manager Blake Knock brought a real Indy 500 practice racing car to the school, as part of the curriculum. He travels throughout Indiana through March showing off the cars and explaining the science behind it.
"I learn a lot from them, as much as they learn from me," he said. "Most of my friends are annoyed with me trying to explain Indy Car/Formula 1 to them in general and it's pretty cool to be able to explain it to kids who are excited to hear about it. There's a lot of behind-the-scenes work that goes into this that most people don't know."
Dani Messick is the education and entertainment reporter for The Goshen News. She can be reached at dani.messick@goshennews.com or at 574-538-2065.
