CHATTANOOGA, TN (WDEF) – Best Buy is famous for its Geek Squad. Those same big brains recently visited Bethlehem Center to teach students how to solve tech problems, and that’s a timely example of “What’s Right With Our Schools”.
“So today we’re happy to have a wonderful partnership with a few local organizations and a large national one, but we have the Best Buy Geek Squad in our building, serving our community’s children, teaching them about science, technology, engineering, art in mathematics,” said Dr. Regionald F. Smith, II, Executive Director at the Bethlehem Center.
“This is kind of a blanket approach towards serving children city-wide. So as you can see we have children from North Side of town, all the way down here to the South Chattanooga as well as East Chatt. So it’s not just the historical children that we’ve served here at the Bethlehem Center, our operational map is the city of Chattanooga and so we’re blessed to have children from all over Hamilton County here in our building,” said Smith.
“Basically, I wanted to meet new people and learn something new, like, go around the world and stuff,” said Kaleis Wodard, a student at Harrison Elementary School.
“So I served as the president of the Bridge Builders Collective. We are a non-profit. Our mission is very simple to empower the underserved community. So I’ve led the efforts to organize it along with our sponsors,” said Travarr Armstrong, the president at Bridge Builders Collective.
“We’re very fortunate enough to be able to partner with the Bethlehem Center to have our… first of… what we hope to be annual event which is the Geek Squad Academy,” said Armstrong.
“Statistics show that there are new… individuals from this area, don’t get it… they’re not necessary for an opportunity to see or to learn about coding. Or to learn about how to even you know… do a podcast. So those efforts and initiatives they’re not necessarily easily accessible. So we wanted to make sure that we had it in a part of the community, where one the children of the community can easily get to this location. Than have to worry bout food, transportation or anything like that. And want to show them that anything is actually possible achievable. A lot of kids don’t have an opportunity to… you don’t necessarily believe that you can be something unless you can see it. So this is our way of showing them that, hey, you can do anything,” said Armstrong.
“I learned how to communicate with people. So you’re going to have to communicate because you wouldn’t find anywhere, how to go in the real world if you don’t communicate with people,” said Wodard.
“We want this program to be a spark for these young children. We recognize not that every kid might like STEAM related to items. But certain children might find something that he gravitate toward and it might become a lifelong hobby. It might become something that they might choose It might also be something that might choose to pursue in school. It might also be something that can lend them a career in the future. We’re just here to open the door for them to have this opportunity.For them to learn about something that might be inside of themselves that they take an interest in,” said Smith.
