♪ <Laura Ybarra> Hello and welcome to Carolina Classrooms, I'm Laura Ybarra.

We're on a field trip at the South Carolina State Museum where I work as the manager of education and interpretive planning.

There are many other places around the state where you can take your students.

On this episode, we're taking you out of the traditional classroom and into a world of fun educational experiences.

The Roper Mountain Science Center is affiliated with the Greenville County School District, but is open for all students and the public.

Covering 62 acres, there is a lot to explore - an observatory, planetarium, living history farm and hands on exhibits.

♪ <Michael Weeks> We really take our mission seriously, which is to ignite the curiosity of all learners to explore and shape the world.

And so everything that we do all of the hands on activities, all of the lessons, all of our displays, and interactive are all geared towards really engaging students and giving them a unique experience that they can't get back in the classroom.

<George Koontz> We were learning about robotics, and we were doing some simple programming.

The students, it was awesome to watch them to solving problems.

<Martin Amati> My favorite part was coding robots to do what we told them, and acting like it was a rover on Mars.

They tried to get it to a, to an outpost and then tried to get it back to our base.

<George Koontz> One of the things that I love about this place is that, it's collaborative learning; The kids are helping each other to learn; They, they fail, they have to go back to the drawing board, figure out why they did.

So it's, it's all of this great collaborative, which is lifelong learning.

And so they get a little taste of what it's like to be with a team and making a team successful.

< You did it!

Good job!

Yes!> <Annabelle Reid> My favorite part at Roper Mountain Science Center was definitely learning about the different skulls and like the teeth and the ways you can tell different animals like by how, which consumers they are, and how much they eat and what they eat.

<John Hurley> One of my favorite things is when you get to see a student experience something that changes their feelings and impression about science.

So it's not just that aha moment, but it's students that maybe didn't know that they loved animals, maybe thought they were afraid of snakes, since they had a chance to handle one, maybe had no idea about all the different careers that are available.

And here at Roper Mountain Science Center, they have a chance to experience and interact and engage with all of those different things so that when they leave, they leave changed and maybe that they will begin thinking about science as a future option for employment, maybe a direction for their lives.

<Valerie Mosher> We try to come up with demonstrations that things that teachers can't do in the classroom, but super standard space.

Like, that is a big focus for us.

And we want to help the teachers with the content they're covering, but we do it in a big way, like our liquid nitrogen, super cold temperatures minus 320 degrees.

We have fire tornadoes and Tesla coils and we blow up hydrogen balloons, and we simulate seasons, convection and chemical reactions, waves, we cover it all.

But definitely we want to get them engaged.

We love to have volunteers, we get the kids up and moving as we're doing our experiments, try to get them involved as much as possible.

We like to just, we make it fun, right.

And it's got to be just interesting and engaging for them.

And just something unique.

We tried to do it in a little kind of Roper Mountain way, a different way than maybe they've seen before.

<Maggie Connelly> In our observatory, we do a couple different things.

We do have some field trip groups come in.

So our fourth graders come in.

And we'll use the telescope to talk about how using a telescope has advanced our understanding of the universe.

It's a way for us to be able to learn about things in outer space without having to actually go to outer space.

Students especially they just love being in here when we can move the dome around to get it to open up or we move the telescope and you just see their look.

And they're like, whoa.

And then we're able to show them something that's like super cool that they might not be able to see close up, you know, it could be the moon which you can see just from looking at it from from the Earth's surface, but being able to really view it through the telescope and to see all the features, the craters, the dark spaces, mountain ranges, it's just, it's really awe inspiring.

We always want students to continue to wonder and ask questions, you know, whether you're eight or 80.

You know, being curious is such a wonderful thing.

So the more that you as a parent or as a teacher can instill wonder and curiosity in your child or your student, the more successful that they're going to be in life regardless of whatever career that they choose.

So, you come here and you get that wonder, that awe inspiring moment and you get, you know that, that moment where you see your your child or your student going WHOA!

And that's when you know that you know that they're on the right path.

<Cassilyn Garrison> I think a teacher should choose Roper Mountain Science Center the be a field trip because Roper Mountain Science Center will make a lot of good, fun activities and learn new things like coding or maybe learning about skulls, about animals and you'll do lots of fun activities, <Michael Weeks> What we're able to do because of the 60 acre campus, because we have a telescope, a planetarium, a living history farm, the environmental science, building all these different experiences here in one place, really sets us apart from science centers nationally.

And the fact that we are owned and operated by a school district means that we are laser focused on really supporting the needs of teachers and students, supporting what the curriculum is and supporting what the standards are, as opposed to just the fun exhibits.

<George Koontz> So we're going to go back down to, down the mountain.

And we'll talk about our experiences today.

And I've already started like this, a few like lore sheets, or little things that we can do, of what they've learned in each of the of the classes that they took today, to be able to show me what they have learned over here.

So I think that the follow through is just as important almost as the classroom as your teaching, because there gets so excited that they lose sight of what is I really doing?

And so then it brings it back to, okay, what did we learn this year?

The vocabulary that was used today was incredible.

It just took so much work off of me.

So now I can do the application of those things that we learned even in this class.

The staff that is here has such a vision for educators all over the state, and they want to see every science teacher succeed.

It's this little group of people that are just spreading that passion that they have for teaching science to young people.

<Laura Ybarra> There are also virtual learning options available.

<Kyle Rollins> Basically our virtual setup, we teach grade second through six.

And each station has a set up for that particular grade level.

And the students get to sign on or the teachers get to sign on, we can come right into the classroom, or we can come right into your home, living room.

And we do the lessons and that's pretty much it.

There is a little bit of interaction.

We can do chat or question and answer.

If it's just one classroom, what I normally like to do is let them unmute their mic, and also get to interact with the students.

So they get to stand up and ask me a question.

And I get to answer back to them.

So this is something that we started you know, during the pandemic, and it's just kind of snowballed into a bigger and better thing.

So just keep, keep up with us because I'm sure they're going to be bigger and brighter things in the future, coming from our virtual program.

<Laura Ybarra> Looking for more virtual options?

The Let's Go series on knowitall.org gives students the opportunity to explore and learn about the Columbia Museum of Art, the Bettis Academy, the Penn Center, and more.

<Pearl Fryar> In 1980, I bought this property and it was a corn field.

And after they harvested the corn, I had the house built and I moved here in '81 and I decided to do the garden, I do my own landscaping, a talent that I was punished for as a kid growing up.

♪ [ trickling water ] ♪ My favorite part about doing it, is this.

It shows what you can accomplish by using what you have.

One of my point to students is this, is that, don't allow someone to tell you what you can and can't do by test scores.

Success is about three things: work, passion and marketing.

Your level of success in life is not whether you graduated the top of the class or the bottom of the class, but how much work you put in to what you do well.

♪ Here at the C.M.A.

we're all about connecting with art and each other, contemplating different works of art and seeing them in new ways and creating something original and being an inspiration.

♪ The Penn Center founded officially in 1865, as the Penn School, is a campus of buildings dedicated to African American education on St. Helena Island, South Carolina.

The Great Depression in the 1930s increased financial burdens and the availability of more public schools on St. Helena Island eventually led to the Penn School becoming a community center in 1948.

Operating as Penn Community Services, the Penn Center offered training for midwives, pioneer and daycare programs, started Teen Canteen, and developed a community health care clinic.

Through the 1950s, 60s and 70s, Penn Center serve as a space for civil rights organization.

In fact, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, a leader with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference held work retreats and strategy sessions for the S.C.L.C.

at the center.

Today, the Penn Center holds national historic landmark status as a side of Reconstruction and Center for African American education and civil rights.

♪ Welcome to the former home of the Modjeska Monteith Simkins, one of South Carolina's most important human rights activist.

She purchased this home in 1932 and it served as a center for social justice for nearly 60 years.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ <Laura Ybarra> There are also career focused tours and interviews all at the click of a mouse.

Head over to knowitall.org and let's go!

The Anne Frank Center on the main campus of the University of South Carolina is offering a delicate approach to learning about one of the most horrific atrocities of the 20th century.

The exhibit allows visitors to immerse themselves in the world that sent Anne Frank into hiding, where she wrote her world-renown diary.

♪ Against the wall stands a replica bookshelf, perhaps, symbolically opening a passageway between two moments in time.

♪ This table and chairs, the games, magazines, and even household appliances survived the war and today help visitors transcend to a world were the Frank family and four others spent 761 days hiding from the Nazis.

But they didn't do it alone.

In 2021, the University of South Carolina unveiled its partnership with the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam, making it one of only four official partner sites in the world.

<Ronald Leopold> We are proud and excited to welcome the Anne Frank Center at the University of South Carolina as the official partner of the Anne Frank House in North America.

We've been working together for a long period of time with a group of excellent Holocaust educators and scholars in South Carolina.

Life Story of Anne Frank is of course a window into the past telling the story of a young girl in hiding during the Holocaust.

But it also encourages us to reflect on important questions for our own times, on who we are and even more important, who we want to be.

It taps into the question: What makes us human?

At the Anne Frank Center in Columbia, photos, video, quotes, and even some original artifacts are thoughtfully placed throughout the building.

A replica of Anne's diary sits on a period specific desk.

A bookshelf in another room showcases multiple editions of the diary in several languages; and it's only a sampling of the more than 70 translations available to readers worldwide.

<Dr.

Doyle Stevick> Our exhibit is called "Anne Frank: A History for Today" for a reason, and that is that Otto Frank insisted that we learn not just history lessons, but the lessons of history.

So it's important for us to think about what happened and what it means for us today.

A history for today suggests it still has relevance for us.

So we needed to step back, think about its meaning and how it relates to issues in the present.

And that's an invitation that we help students facilitate themselves.

<Dr.

Harris Pastides> So, while Anne Frank was a victim of the Holocaust, of course there is tyranny that exists today, around the world, not that far away, by the way, but also in remote parts of the world.

So we want children, to have a gentle introduction to the fact that the world is a beautiful and wonderful place, but at the same time, can be a dangerous and unjust place as well.

And we think they can leave here not only with education about the Holocaust and World War Two, but about a bit about their world today.

<Dr.

Doyle Stevick> The Anne Frank House has an educational philosophy they call the three R's, Remember, Reflect and Respond and to remember, we learned the history.

So we have two rooms dedicated to the timeline, what happened.

And then we have two rooms dedicated to reflection, and we reflect on themes such as, what does it mean to be an up stander to be a helper?

What motivates people to take on risk and danger to support others?

And what was life like and hiding?

And the third R is to respond.

And that's the idea that what we learn here should inspire our own actions into the future.

And we have two seminar rooms that we can use to use breakout educational activities and explore those kinds of questions.

<Dr.

Harris Pastides> There are, the connections with American slavery are really profound.

And I think, without visiting this place, you might not be aware of them, but the exhibits show how Adolf Hitler was influenced by how the earlier Americans treated African people who were brought here to be enslaved.

<Dr.

Doyle Stevick> And Mein Kampf is painful for us today for many reasons.

One of them is that he took the very worst parts of American history and held that up as his model for what he wanted Germany to be.

That included the gunning down as he put it of hundreds of thousands of Native American people, and especially in his view, a racial conception of citizenship which held Black Americans in a lower status.

By sharing Anne's legacy, the University of South Carolina's Anne Frank Center, seeks to inspire their commitment to never be bystanders, and instead stand up together against inequality wherever it may exist.

<Ronald Leopold> Anne's words help us to better understand the challenges of our own times.

Anne Frank was born in the same year as Dr. Martin Luther King in 1929, just a few months apart.

They both fell victim to racist ideologies.

But their dreams continue to inspire people all over the world and we're very excited that the Anne Frank Center and the University of South Carolina will help us to bring Anne's dreams to people all over the United States of America and Canada.

<Laura Ybarra> Now open to the public, the Anne Frank Center is inviting schools and other groups to plan a visit with guided tours and extended programming options available at the University of South Carolina Campus in Columbia.

Special tours are also offered for adults and for families with children ages 12 and up with hopes of creating more age appropriate tours for younger audiences in the future.

To schedule a tour or find out more, go to sc.edu/AnneFrankCenter When you book a field trip here at the State Museum, we take really good care of you and help you through each step of the process, from booking the trips and finding out what's available, to getting your lunches to the lunch room and all the free classes that we have to offer.

<Tom Falvey> One of the great things about a museum trip is that you are looking at, oftentimes, the real object.

Even the best friend train, which is behind me, isn't the real best friend train because it blew up.

But it is a model that was specifically created based on the blueprints of the original.

And to understand the history of the economics of this particular time in history, the people who built this, the people who built the tracks.

So you can tell a complete story, you can tell a history story, you can tell a science story.

And you can tell a rural South Carolina story as well as all that was happening in the 19th century.

And it's a really, I think, it's a solid way for you to take something home and be able to say take something back to the classroom and say remember when we talked about all of these pieces and how they came together in one object.

And I think it's much better to be able to look at the real thing and see it, rather than seeing that on a picture somewhere.

And the great thing is, we are all four disciplines here.

We at least we have four disciplines.

So if you want to come for an art program, natural history, science and technology, or cultural history, all of that's available.

Of course, we added the observatory back in 2014.

And so that observatory is a great way to connect with the museum, either right here in the classroom, or in the observatory, or virtually.

So, the virtual programs are something we really were able to latch on to during the height of the pandemic and that's something we'll be able to take forward as well.

It's a, it's a chance for you to connect live with our observatory and doing that you're able to talk live to an astronomer or an astronomy educator, and look at the sky in real time, as well as look at some of the recorded images that we have.

And that really does cover all of those great astronomy standards that are not so easy to teach in school.

The telescope we're using off to the side is actually filtered and that allows us to look at the sun safely.

So do you see the telescope moving still?

[ yeah ] <Liz Klimek> The planetarium is an immersive learning environment.

And it's very interdisciplinary.

So, when you come to the planetarium, there's a variety of shows, some live some pre recorded, and we do a lot of astronomy related or space related shows, but we also have done shows about natural history or about ecosystems.

And we've done shows that are artistic.

We do laser shows, which is an art form.

So when you arrive at the State Museum, one of our educators will come down and greet you.

And we usually touch base with the teacher.

See if there's any special seating arrangements.

Do you have any special needs that you need addressed?

And then, we usually, we'll do a little kind of Q and A at the beginning and just see who's been here before and see if anybody has some misconceptions that we might address in our programs.

So, what shape was the moon the last time you saw it?

Where in the sky did you see the moon?

Did you see the moon in the daytime?

Things like that.

And then we get our show started.

And what show we end up seeing just depends on what show you've booked.

You can book shows about the Earth, moon and the sun, about ecosystems, about the sky tonight, about how moon phases work.

So we have a variety of things to meet.

I think it's great for teachers to bring their students to the museum and the planetarium because nothing really beats the environment.

So you can learn only so much from reading a book and looking at a diagram.

Virtual programs are great in their own way.

They allow us to stay connected and to keep teaching when we can't all be together, but there is something about the shared experience of all being in a new place together.

In the planetarium, nothing can really replace that environment where you're trying to simulate reality as closely as you can.

So we recreate the night sky for example, we can control time and space, you can go backwards and forwards in time, and you can see the sky move above you as it would in reality and that's something that doesn't always translate very well when you're trying to learn it from a diagram in a book or a little video on a flat screen.

I love the comments that students will shout out.

You'll hear a kid just yell out, "Are we in space?"

Or one little girl shouted out in the middle of the show, just "I love this so much!"

And those things are so heartwarming.

You know you're reaching kids, and that they're being inspired and that they're enjoying the experience.

We really want them to gain an appreciation for science, an understanding of science, a love for it, and to just want to go out and learn more on their own.

And maybe when they go back to their classrooms, be excited about the next lesson that's gonna come because they were so inspired in here about what they learned and saw, even if they didn't necessarily remember that much, but they want to learn more.

And they had that emotional response and that experience that, that they'll hopefully remember for years to come.

<Tom Falvey> We always tell teachers, the best reason to come here is that this is free to South Carolina students.

And that's true for almost everything except for our planetarium show for these shows.

But that's not the best reason.

I mean, that is a great reason.

We're really excited to be able to be free for all South Carolina students.

But I think that the fact that you can spend an entire day here and you can get so much out of it, and you can really explore multiple disciplines.

The fact that our galleries are constantly changing.

You can learn about famous people in South Carolina.

You can learn all the way across from art discipline all the way to the cultural history floor, and it's, it's really a complete experience.

So I highly recommend coming for a free field trip as well as a chance to come and learn about everything you can possibly want to cram into a day.

<Laura Ybarra> Contact each of these locations directly or check their websites to find out more about virtual and in person field trip options.

Thanks for joining us.

We'll be back on TV in February.

♪ ♪