What’s Right With Our Schools: STEM School Chattanooga’s 4K Microscope

CHATTANOOGA, TN (WDEF) – When you look through a 4K microscope, the world racks into focus in a whole new way. Even the most ordinary things contain a treasure trove of information. Students at Stem School Chattanooga get a first hand look.

Sam Tugman is a Senior at STEM School Chattanooga.

He says, “4k class, at least to me, is a collection of some of my favorite people here at the STEM School, and we get to learn all sorts of things that they’re kind of weird. It’s not basic science course things. It’s looking at different foods we find and looking at insects. We just like find in classrooms.”

Cooper Brock is also a Senior.

Cooper explains, “We’re very close, you know. It’s not just a class. It’s very much more like a group of friends with Seigel as our mom.”

Teacher Shannon Seigle exlpains, “It’s a 4k class not a club. We’re creating the few, the future innovators, the future like just people to discover stuff. We have college level microscopes. So we’re super grateful, and we’re blessed to have like 13 college level microscopes, but the resolution is just so different with the 4k, just the intensity, the resolution. Well it looks like kind of blobish, for lack of a better term, on a regular compound light microscope. It looks sharp, clear and we can really see details on the same image using the 4k microscope. 4k is not just about microscope work and about science, 4k is about building a family.”

Belle Jenkins is also a Senior at Chattanooga STEM School.

She says, “It’s helped us grow together because we can do things that we want to do. And we, you know, we’ve talked about things that, you know, you don’t talk about in other classes. And you know we’ve just connected a lot through that.”

Ms. Seigle concludes, “A family of trust, these kids share with each other stuff that they’re going through. They support each other through everything thick or thin. They’re thick as thieves as they would say, and so it’s about like that social aspect of it and knowing somebody is there and got your back at all times, but it’s also about the science and also about sharing what we do here as a platform school with other schools. Like we don’t want to just do cool stuff here, we want to promote doing cool stuff other places and give them access to that technology.”