n this newsletter, let’s look at how one school has begun to innovate and collaborate. Lake City Academy and Upper Columbia Academy have partnered together to meet the needs of their community.

The Lake City Academy’s makerspace is a collaborative workspace inside the school for making, learning, exploring, and sharing. This space gives STEM students the opportunity to learn in a hands-on environment, develop critical thinking skills, and even boost self-confidence.

The school utilizes an innovative educational approach that focuses on science, technology, engineering, art and math. The foundations for this program are curiosity, critical thinking, and process-based learning. Students take calculated risks, participate in experience-based learning, become aggressive problem solvers, work well with others, and effectively navigate the creative process. STEAM empowers students to become the innovators, educators, leaders, and pupils of the 21st century.

STEAM is an integrated approach to learning which requires an intentional connection among standards, assessments, and lesson design/implementation. True STEAM experiences involve two or more standards from Science, Technology, Engineering, Math, and the Arts to be taught AND assessed in and through each other. Utilizing and leveraging the integrity of the arts themselves is essential to an authentic STEAM initiative.

H. Stephen Bralley, M.Ed.

Director of Secondary Education, North American Division