How flying pucks and slap shots can get kids excited about math and science

A Sun-Times series spotlighting the people and professions that keep Chicago thriving. Sports profiles are made possible by the Chicago Blackhawks.

Noah Doppelt describes it as a dream job.

The 28-year-old senior schools manager with tech start-up EverFi is equipping Chicago schools with an unusual partner in teaching kids science and math concepts: professional hockey.

Through a partnership between the NHL, the NHL Players Association and the Washington, D.C.-based EverFi, nearly 30,000 K-12 students — including many children and teens enrolled in Chicago Public Schools — use Future Goals-Hockey Scholar every year.

It’s an online course in which students learn science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) principles on a virtual ice rink. They’re taught to calculate angles, for instance, while interacting with a simulated hockey player who bangs a puck off the boards or observe kinetic energy by way of a slap shot. Hockey Scholar feels more like a video game than, say, a math textbook.

“Obviously, sports are things that kids usually care about way more than school. And so relating different STEM concepts to a sport like hockey is exciting,” says Doppelt. It “makes them conceptualize it more than a story problem like saying a rocket is going 100 miles an hour and you have to figure out the speed. So we’re sort of bringing [STEM] to life with a sport.”

What really brings math and science lessons to life is First Stride: the learn-to-skate field trip to Fifth Third Arena that integrates Future Goals. Additionally, in February, more than 8,000 participating students packed into the United Center for the STEM Showcase, an opportunity to watch as Blackhawks players like Dylan Strome and Drake Caggiula demonstrated what applying energy, speed, and angles to a puck looks like in person.

“It’s kind of mayhem because it’s literally thousands of kids just screaming their heads off and getting excited about actual hockey players down on the ice [teaching] them,” said Doppelt.

First Stride is the equivalent of the Stanley Cup finals for Doppelt, whose day-to-day job is a bit more relaxed. As senior schools manager, his job largely consists of convincing districts on the merit of EverFi’s many K-12 educational programs — which include health and wellness, financial literacy and empathy-building lessons. He then works with school administrators and teachers to properly implement Future Goals and EverFi’s other digital learning programs.

Many times, he’s also interacting with kids directly, including a recent visit to Crown Community Academy of Fine Arts, at 2128 South St. Louis Ave., which is 91 percent low-income.

“I end up being a part-time teacher sometimes and that’s great,” said Doppelt, who grew up in Evanston and now lives in Logan Square. “I love that we’re so student and learner-focused instead of just trying to get as many dollars from a district as we can.”

James Foster/For the Sun-Times

Promoting STEM is a major focus in schools around the U.S. because the number of students interested in a career in science, technology, engineering, and math keeps plummeting, according to research. Only 24 percent of boys and 11 percent of girls are interested in a STEM job, according to a survey of 1,000 teens conducted last year by Ernst & Young and Colorado-based nonprofit Junior Achievement USA.

But Doppelt believes that Future Goals is one piece of the puzzle to help turn that number around.

“We’re getting kids excited about physics — which is a hard thing to do — and in the process introducing them to the careers of the future.”