Education students bring hands-on learning to community STEAM night
LEXINGTON, Ky. (April 24, 2025) — The University of Kentucky is where many students begin their journeys toward careers that make a difference. For aspiring teachers, those journeys often start early.
Avalynne Goins, a freshman majoring in STEM Education, was among several UK elementary education and STEM education majors who helped lead interactive activities for students and their families this semester during a Family STEAM Night at Woodhill Community Center. The students and their professors collaborated on the event with Amachi Lexington and Urban Impact, an initiative of Lexington Leadership Foundation.
For Goins, the experience reinforced her decision to pursue a career in education.
“I gained experience in the realm of teaching, but more importantly, I got to see how important it is to make learning fun and exciting for kids,” she said.
UK College of Education Assistant Professor Sahar Alameh, Ph.D., and clinical instructor Joni Meade led their students in planning the event. Alameh said experiences like these reveal to education majors the power of engaging both students and families to ignite a passion for learning.
“Through hands-on exploration, our students are not only inspiring an interest in STEAM subjects among children and their families, but they’re also shaping how these young learners view themselves academically — proving they have the potential to successfully pursue futures in STEAM fields,” Alameh said.
Goins enjoyed the chance to practice teaching outside a traditional classroom.
“Activities like STEAM Night are so valuable because they have less pressure associated with learning and focus on the kid's enjoyment,” she said.
Early teaching experiences — especially witnessing young learners grasp new concepts — often spark a passion for education. For Goins, that passion grew in high school when she volunteered at an elementary school. Since then, she has also worked with high school students and coached multiple sports.
“In each environment, I have loved seeing the excitement that others have when they learn something new and feel proud of their growth,” she said.
Her decision to major in STEM Education, with a focus on biology, stemmed from a similar sense of pride in her own learning journey.
“I have been interested in teaching from a very young age, but I also enjoy learning difficult concepts and pushing myself to grow. The STEM Education pathway provided me with the necessary pathway to fulfill both desires,” Goins said.
The event at Woodhill Community Center included activities such as building and racing balloon hovercrafts, exploring capillary action with a walking water activity and playing math baseball and football games.
“For the arts component (the A in STEAM), our elementary education majors planned a poetry station where children wrote different types of poetry and we provided a poetry journal for students to take home and continue to write,” Meade said.
Goins’ group designed a candy DNA model for students to replicate, explained the parts of DNA and demonstrated how important DNA is to life.
“I hope that participants of STEAM night were able to walk away with a little bit more excitement for learning, and the understanding that not all learning has to take place solely to pass a test,” she said.
As the state’s flagship, land-grant institution, the University of Kentucky exists to advance the Commonwealth. We do that by preparing the next generation of leaders — placing students at the heart of everything we do — and transforming the lives of Kentuckians through education, research and creative work, service and health care. We pride ourselves on being a catalyst for breakthroughs and a force for healing, a place where ingenuity unfolds. It's all made possible by our people — visionaries, disruptors and pioneers — who make up 200 academic programs, a $476.5 million research and development enterprise and a world-class medical center, all on one campus.