Customer:
St Athanasius School

Location:
Evanston, Illinois

Demographic:
Public, PK-8

School Profile:
The students population is 275 and the student-teacher ratio is 8:1.

School Mission:
Love Learn Lead

Solution:
We Teach & Grades 5 - 8

The NextWave STEM “We Teach” program has helped St. A’s embrace the teaching of science and mathematics concepts while focusing on hands-on learning with real-world applications in order to help students develop a variety of competencies, including creativity and 21st-Century skills. A modern approach for a school rooted in tradition.

 
 

St. Athanasius School is a Catholic school in Chicago serving PK-8th grade students. School graduates compete to get into private and selective high schools in the city, a highly-selective enrollment process with limited spots per high school. High schools appreciate the wide range of ways St. Athanasius staff support the whole child. The school offers a rigorous curriculum and an extensive collection of extracurriculars including Sports, Chess Club, Mandarin and Irish dance. STEM is one of the “special” topics that is offered during the day such as music and art

“They’ve been so helpful and honestly I don’t know what I would’ve

done without a STEM teacher this year! Ideally we would like to

expand to more grade levels within the next 3-5 years.” 

-Kelly Foyle, Principal

Challenge:

In the Summer of 2021, the assistant principal and STEM teacher retired leaving large shoes to fill and though the school advertised for a new STEM teacher, they were not finding anyone to fill them. A School Board member recommended looking at some of the local organizations that offer STEM to see if they could help. The principal sent email inquiries to a few different companies and scheduled a meeting with the team at NextWave STEM to explore how the program could meet the need for STEM instruction within the school’s limited budget.

Result:

NextWave STEM’s “We Teach” program was a great solution to overcome the challenge of finding a new STEM teacher. St. A’s was able to procure an instructor and the equipment: robots, drones and 3D printers for the entire school year. The NextWave STEM instructor engages with all students for 40 minutes twice a week. Since August 2021, students at St. A’s are exploring the concepts of coding with mBot, 3D design/development with Tinkercad and programming drone flight with an engaging curriculum.