Lifetime Citizen Portal Access — AI Briefings, Alerts & Unlimited Follows
Assistant Superintendent Cole Sampson highlights Steamyard, countywide STEAM camps and lending library
Loading...
Summary
Cole Sampson told the Kern County Board of Education that the Steamyard and STEAM for Kern have served thousands of students through field trips, camps and a lending library, are expanding teacher professional development and mentor pipelines, and plan new math and coding events.
Assistant Superintendent Cole Sampson presented the Kern County Office of Education's STEAM for Kern initiative and the Steamyard facility during the board's March 10 meeting, describing an array of student programs, teacher professional development and a growing countywide lending library.
Sampson told trustees the Steamyard repurposed the former curriculum resource center into an interactive, hands‑on space that offers maker spaces, a recording studio, a drone and VEX room, and a patio for hydroponics and vertical gardening. "It is going to be an interactive hands on space where kids are gonna come, have fun, explore, learn, dream, and innovate," Sampson said.
The program has hosted more than 70 field trips since August and, Sampson said, has "served over 5,000 students just in field trips during the morning" and engaged more than 11,000 students countywide through camps and site visits. He described a lending library that allows teachers and home‑school programs to check out classroom‑ready science kits and technologies — including 3‑D printers, Spheros, Ozobots and microscopes — and said the KCSOS team will deliver kits anywhere in the county via a request form on kernsteamyard.org.
Sampson emphasized professional learning for educators: last summer KCSOS piloted a model combining teacher PD with Steam Camp co‑teaching and this year is offering a PD week where teachers spend a full day learning camp pedagogy and then co‑teach with college‑age mentors. "We now employ over 90 mentors across our county to help us run these camps," Sampson said, adding that many mentors are college students who have shifted toward education careers after working in the program.
The presentation noted partnerships with Bakersfield College and Cal State Bakersfield for dual‑enrollment and early college pathways, and with community sites such as the Kern County Museum. Sampson also listed upcoming events, including IgniteHER (a one‑day conference for female third‑through‑sixth graders), a large county science fair and a math symposium.
Board members and members of the public praised the expansion. Joanna Kendrick, of the Central Academy of Arts and Technology, told trustees CAAT has received more than 350 new applications this enrollment season and thanked the office for assistance with facilities planning. Trustees asked logistics questions about field trip scheduling and whether homeschool groups can use the Steamyard; Sampson said field trips are currently open to homeschool families and tend to fill quickly.
The Steamyard remains a central piece of KCSOS's outreach: Sampson said the program operates camps on multiple sites and runs six weeks of summer camps, with targeted offerings such as a foster‑youth camp. For more details and to request materials, Sampson directed listeners to kernsteamyard.org.
The board did not take an action on the presentation; it was delivered as an informational item.
