Spring ISD was awarded a $20,000 grant from ExxonMobil in November to add robotics to its curriculum at six schools. This award comes on the heels of a $10,000 grant from the oil company last year and an additional $5,000 addendum in August. Students from Heritage, Northgate Crossing, Ponderosa, Hoyland and Jenkins elementary schools along with Roberson Middle School will receive the enrichment program embedded into curriculum thanks to the Science, Engineering, Communications, Math Enrichment ExxonMobil mini-grant award. “This grant is exactly what we needed,” SISD Chief Academic Officer Lupita Hinojosa said. “This is a hands-on, minds-on, problem solving program. The students see a problem and take ownership of the solution.” The grant will allow for the formation of a robotics team at each campus that could compete in competitions at the local, state and national levels, Hinojosa said. Through this program, students will build their own robots and become problem solvers with the help of science and math, said Neelam Singh, director of secondary science for SISD. The program could also help improve academic performance at the six schools and teach students to think independently, Hinojosa said. “This is not the days of yesteryear where they’re memorizing the test,” Hinojosa said. “Learning does not happen through memorization of a textbook. Having this program allows the district to learn to create problem solvers.” The $20,000 SECME grant also allows SISD to provide professional development for teachers in science, technology, engineering and math fields and is helping engage parents in the community. “Many times fathers are not engaged,” Hinojosa said. “Now dads are coming in and being part of this learning.” Hinojosa and Singh hope this program works out similarly to the district’s first SECME grant, which allowed students to build mouse traps and bottle rockets and for science and math competitions. “Our students in the SECME program are excited and highly engaged,” Singh said. “The students who participate are excelling in science and math scores. The parents are also involved when we take the students to competitions.” Improving its STEM offering through this grant will allow the district to better prepare students for a fast-changing global workforce, Hinojosa said. “The jobs of tomorrow that these students will be filling are not even created yet,” Hinojosa said. “The goal is to not teach them to be [engineers]. We have to teach them to learn to be problem solvers.”