ATHABASCA — There’s something special happening every Friday at the Rochester School and it involves STEAM.
The school's new STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts, mathematics) program offers options for students in Grades 1-9. Those in Grades 5-9 get to choose two, ranging from wood working to gymnastics, said principal Elizabeth Siemens said in an interview Sept. 29.
“We’re taking our Fridays and making them a little bit extra special; we’re calling Fridays 'Rochester STEAM Academy,” Siemens said. “Art and music are ones we’re offering especially because the Grades 5 and 6 still need to have those as part of their programming.”
All the students can also take part in gymnastics at the Pine Valley Gym Centre at Tawatinaw for eight lessons.
“The kids are being bussed down there for hour-and-a-half lessons,” she said. “Because we’re only 15 minutes away from Tawatinaw it’s kind of nice to be able to partner up with them and hopefully in the winter we can do some stuff with the ski hill as well.”
Another option being offered is woodworking, starting with the construction of a chicken coop to prepare students for future options. Woodworking includes several STEAM components, like math, figuring out angles and fractions; engineering; and art, to refine the finished product and make it appealing to look at.
“What we're going to do is actually build a chicken coop that we're going to house on the property and hopefully add some chickens and maybe some ducks and hatching eggs and stuff like that for the future so we're hoping to have some more agricultural portions to our school.”
Siemens' dream is to build a thriving agricultural and horticultural base like the one offered in a similarly sized school in southern Alberta.
“We’re kind of basing some of our structure (of the program) on a school called Altario,” said Siemens. “A couple of us, like Grassland (School) and myself, we both came across this school and we’re like, ‘Oh, tell us more.’”
Altario School started a robust program in 2016 with its student-led farm and while it varies from year to year it typically covers everything from chickens and geese, steers, sheep, and bees to crops. The students decide what they want to do every year and then elect a general manager, finance manager, predator control manager, and even a student for public relations plus any other positions as needed.
“Last (school) year we met with some of the parents of the school ... and one of the things that came out of that was we have a lot of stuff close by to us, why can't we utilize it better,” she said. “I came to that meeting with this great idea of this agricultural program, which was not as exciting at first for the parents, but I think they're starting to see the excitement building with it.”
Siemens said her vision is to have chickens and one day a greenhouse, something Grassland School added last school year, and are now selling the results to recoup costs and fundraise.
To accommodate the new program, students work on their core subjects Monday to Thursday with Friday being STEAM Academy Day and Siemens says she has noticed a difference.
“We saw some trends happening and it almost seemed like kids were choosing not to come on Fridays or leaving halfway through the day,” she said. “So, giving them this; when students have more choice they have more buy-in. We wanted to be able to offer more choice and what’s nice about our school is that everybody got their first choice.”
So, for now, Siemens' husband teaches the woodworking, a staff member is offering cosmetology and she will teach painting while other staff are organizing and teaching other options like sign language and French, but the hope is more community members come forward to help.
“I’m hoping as it builds, we can have that community involvement and have options offered beyond what our staff do.” said Siemens. “It’s not just what we can bring but it’s what the whole community can bring (while) making sure it’s very grounded in curriculum.”
