The All-American Soap Box Derby is bringing the thrill of the hill to the classroom with a STEM curriculum it has developed and is selling to schools. The goal is to help steer more students toward careers in science, technology, engineering and math.
What started as two cars in the Gravity Racing Challenge (GRC) program at Akron’s STEM school in 2010 has grown into a five-module curriculum for elementary and middle school students. Four are for grades 5-6 and the fifth is for grades 6-8. Derby officials hope to get the program into groups that help at-risk youth, such as the Boys & Girls Clubs, as well.
“Studies have shown you need to get the kids before they get into high school in order to have an impact on their future career choices, and that’s why we’re in fifth and sixth grade with our curriculum,” said derby President and CEO Joe Mazur.
The program was piloted last year at local districts, including Tallmadge and Springfield.
Those districts, plus Woodridge, Coventry and David Hill elementary in Akron have agreed to run the curriculum after Jan. 1 based on funding they’ll be receiving, Mazur and Vice President Bobby Dinkins said Wednesday. The curriculum became available last month.
It cost the derby $152,000 to develop, Mazur said.
In the GRC, students build derby cars and race them against other schools. Last year, there were 166 teams, Dinkins said.
“These teachers who were involved with our program said that the kit is great, we’re teaching our kids STEM, we’re teaching them friction, and forces and motion and gravity and things like that, but we’d really like something that we can use as a tool either inside the classroom or outside the classroom, and so that was the idea for the curriculum,” Dinkins said.
“We always get the question, ‘what makes the car go faster if the kits are all the same?’ ” he said. “And a lot of it has to do with science, and so the curriculum is kind of built that way: How do you make your Soap Box Derby car faster?”
Many topics covered
The derby worked on developing the curriculum with teachers at the Bio-Med Science Academy, a public STEM high school on the campus of the Northeast Ohio Medical University in Rootstown, and a teacher who moved to the Akron Public Schools during the process.
While the curriculum covers science and math, it also delves into the history of the derby, introducing English, reading and writing as well.
Module 1, Making History, includes four lessons with the titles A Glance at the Past, Patterns Are Everywhere, Racing Energy and Writing the Derby Story.
“It really kind of introduces them to the Soap Box Derby, it talks about the history of the derby where they go through the historians’ tool kit, where we have historical articles about the Soap Box Derby,” Dinkins said.
Students learn about the history of the derby and the values associated with it. At the end of the module they write their own children’s derby history book.
Scott Freeze, a fifth-grade science and social studies teacher at Springfield’s Schrop Intermediate School and one of the teachers who piloted the program, said he was surprised at how few students knew about the derby as an Akron institution and did take the time apart from the derby curriculum to talk about the history with them.
“They didn’t realize that this was the headquarters, that people travel from all over,” he said. “When you see people with stuff written all over their car, they’ve traveled from other places to compete in Akron.”
Freeze showed the students older pictures of what the derby looked like and used Google Earth to show them the track.
“There’s crossover throughout the entire curriculum,” Dinkins said.
Module 1 also prepares the students for the science of the derby, introducing the types of energy — potential and kinetic — that are used in racing.
The lessons come with supplies such as the parts needed to build mini cars. Students insert sticks and add sails to test the effects on drag. They also might add weights to look at speed and design and build their own parachutes.
The most advanced module is Module 5, in which older students build a super stock car. They map out Derby Downs foot by foot using Google Earth, put it in an Excel spreadsheet and calculate the drop, Dinkins said.
Teachers, kids pleased
Teachers have been pleased with the curriculum.
“I like the differentiation in it,” said Justin Christopher, a teacher in Tallmadge’s engineering and technology education department who piloted the curriculum last year and has been involved with the GRC for several years. “I can teach to gifted students as well as those who are having some trouble in a few areas.
“The gifted kids did unbelievable with it. They were really able to run with it. Some on lower end really enjoyed more of the hands-on part of curriculum. It has a lot of hands-on components to it,” he said.
“It’s nice because it gives the kids an opportunity to connect science to other disciplines,” Springfield’s Freeze said.
Students have enjoyed the curriculum, too, Christopher and Freeze said.
“The students loved it, especially the hands-on activities,” Christopher said, noting that his students were able to build their own racetrack out of the cardboard supplied, build mini cars and figure out weight ratios and what made the cars faster using washers. “Students were able to tie in applied physics, Newton’s laws of motion, gravity, mass,” Christopher said, adding that it’s nice to have that at the earlier grade level.
“It was hard, but good because it would challenge them to learn how to do the activities,” Freeze said. “It was good at making sure students follow correct scientific procedure, so they are doing multiple trials, not just once. It taught them real science, how to follow the correct way to do things and record data as they go.”
But it wasn’t just about the learning.
“They really felt special that they were able to stay after and do the activities,” Freeze said.
The derby plans to measure the curriculum’s success by giving the students a survey at the end of the year.
It also has plans to eventually expand. Regional program coordinators have been hired with the hopes of reaching all 50 states and eventually the world, Mazur said. Right now there are coordinators for the Virginia and Pennsylvania region and Ohio and West Virginia. Cars are currently being used in New Zealand, Mazur said, and the derby is also in Japan and Canada.
Mazur told of a student who raced in 1947 and went on to become an engineer because of his involvement with the derby. “Thousands and thousands” of racers have gone on to have STEM careers, Dinkins said.
“We’re putting this in the classroom, but the derby has been STEM education its whole existence of 80 years,” Mazur said.
Monica L. Thomas can be reached at 330-996-3827 or mthomas@thebeaconjournal.com. Follow her on Twitter @MLThomasABJ and https://www.facebook.com/MLThomasABJ.