Janice Barton, a STEAM teacher at Wareham Middle School, has been recognized for her work to involve under-represented and low-income students in science by the Society for Science & the Public.

Barton was awarded an advocate grant, which includes $3,000 in funding, a trip to Washington, D.C., to learn about best practices and connect with other educators, and continued support and mentorship throughout the year.

“It’s kind of tailor-made for Wareham,” Barton said of the grant. “It talks about populations that might need an extra boost to get interested in science, technology, and engineering.”

Barton said that she is looking forward to learning from other teachers at the Advocate Training Institute, which is scheduled for June.

“I’m excited to bring it back to everybody next year,” Barton said. Her main goal is to increase participation in both the Science Fair and Science Club — both in numbers and in the type of students participating.

“[I] hope to reach out to some students that might not think of the Science Fair as the first thing they’d want to do or spend time on,” Barton said. “But they might like something about science, or there’s a way to couch it a little differently.”

She also wants to get the Minot Elementary School students more involved.

Currently, Barton teaches an introduction to STEAM (science, technology, engineering, art, and mathematics) class to all fourth, fifth, and seventh graders. The class is based on Project Lead the Way, a curriculum that is tied to educational standards and focuses on projects and problem-solving.

Barton said that in her classes, students get to apply what they are learning about science, math, and technology in other classes. For example, after fourth graders learn about simple machines, they work together to build a machine that could rescue a tiger from a moat.To learn more about the Society for Science & the Public, go to www.societyforscience.org.