For Brandon Wolf and Alyssa Santiago, both alumni of Neil Armstrong Middle School in Fairless Hills, PA, being part of the “Tiger Tech” squad in their middle school years helped launch them into STEM fields of study and tech-related work. Tiger Tech is an example of a student tech team, a group composed of middle and high school students at Verizon Innovative Learning Schools who function as an in-house IT department. The students help both their peers and also their teachers with the integration of technology into the classroom. The first student tech teams were created in 2014, when Wolf was in eighth grade, and today have expanded into hundreds of Verizon Innovative Learning Schools around the country. The tech skills — and confidence — that Santiago built up in the program still help her in her daily life, she says. “Troubleshooting is usually such a barrier for people, but doing it as young as eighth grade, you troubleshoot life problems, classroom problems, anything,” she says. “I still use that in college now.” For Wolf, his exposure to the field through the student tech team increased his desire to pursue a STEM major. “It definitely inspired me to go study mathematics in school,” says Wolf, who went on to graduate from Cornell University in Ithaca, NY. It also provided Wolf with career-readiness skills. “The biggest thing I got from Tiger Tech was…just learning to love problem-solving and troubleshooting. And that’s what I do every day in my job,” Wolf says. Verizon Innovative Learning is an award-winning education initiative addressing barriers to digital inclusion. It is a key part of Citizen Verizon, the company’s responsible business plan to help move the world forward for all. #VerizonInnovativeLearning, #CitizenVerizon, #Education, #STEM, #Technology

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