Social Brain Goes to School

Social Brain Goes to School: How Relationships Power Learning

Harnessing the Power of the Social Brain in Learning

Mark Pritchett, recently retired Foundation CEO, describes the STEMsmart initiative as an investment in children’s futures. “I never saw students having so much fun learning and teachers having so much fun teaching,” he said. “We could walk in with a large group of community members, and the teachers and student teams were so engaged they never knew we were in their classroom. The excite- ment was palpable!” Pritchett related the collaborative approach of STEMsmart to his world of work as a CEO, stat- ing, “I spend 75% of my workday with various teams jointly solving problems and coming up with solutions that none of us would have fig - ured out alone.”

Photo by David Hansen, Jacobs Engineering

A community and district partnership spon- sored by the Gulf Coast Community Foun- dation (GCCF) in collaboration with Sarasota County Schools, Florida, is a revolutionary ini- tiative called STEMsmart that maximizes the potential of students’ social brains. Within all middle schools, students actively engage their social brains through collaborative teamwork every day. Emphasizing interactive and expe- riential learning with real-world applications yielded improved test scores, increased stu- dent interest in STEM careers, and resulted in greater enrollment in advanced classes. You can witness the dynamic teacher-student and student-peer interactions in the videos avail- able at this link: https://www.gulfcoastcf.org/ our-initiatives/education/stemsmart

Photo by David Hansen, Jacobs Engineering