Doug Spring of Salvadori Center testifies on hands-on STEAM as screen alternative

Good afternoon, Council members, Krishna and Dinowitz and Wong and General Counsel.

Thank you.

My name is Doug Spring.

I'm the Chief Operating Officer at the Salvadori Center.

At Salvadori, we provide STEAM education services, that is STEM plus the A for arts and architecture, to schools, after-school sites, and NYCHA community centers across the five boroughs, focusing on the built environment.

For context, last year, Salvadori taught over 12,000 students in 178 sites.

Our goal is to make STEAM come alive for students through the built environment and to foster the soft skills of collaboration, creativity, and problem solving, just like real-life architects, designers, and engineers.

At Salvadori, we have seen firsthand the impact of investing in this hands-on approach to STEAM education for young people, and we're grateful for your support through the CASA initiatives and digital inclusion and literacy funding that we receive from the council.

Our residencies explore and have students create 3D models to reflect their values of their peers.

These models before me represent a model skyscraper and a model community center produced by students at South Beach UAU Cornerstone on Staten Island.

I've included pictures of two recent 3D models prepared as part of Salvadori's STEAM Innovators summer programs at Ravenswood Cornerstone in Queens.

And East Chester Gardens Community Center in the Bronx at the bottom of this testimony.

for your review.

You'll see these models are made without technology, cardboard, rulers, glue, and clay.

Just to name a few, our STEAM educators rely on hands-on instruction throughout the cohort to demonstrate all facets of the design process with common school supplies.

Salvadori and NYU are concluding a study this year to present finding that children who received this community-focused project-based curriculum offered by Salvadori maintain their interest and self-efficacy in math

compared to declines among children exposed to a particular curriculum.

Particular curriculum.

While Salvadori supports the curated and carefully monitored use of screen time when they meaningfully enhance and support individual goals,

for example CAD, which helps architects provide their floor plans, we believe our model of hands-on project-based learning offers top-tier alternatives to screen time in the classroom.

We thank you for the opportunity today and we're grateful for the partnership with the City Council and our partners in the room.

Thank you so much, you all, for your testimony.

We'll call up the next panel.

We have Charlotte Pope, Lainey Hemison, Alyssa East,

And Sophia Addison.

I'm going to, just given the interest of time, too, I'm going to give you all a 15-second warning before it's two minutes and really would ask you all to wrap up at two minutes so we can keep moving forward.

Thank you.

Sure.

You want to start, Lainey?

Go ahead.