Menlo-Atherton High School celebrated its new Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Math (STEAM) wing on Tuesday, Oct. 30.
The Sequoia Union High School District held a grand opening for the new $12 million building at the Atherton school. The two-story, steel-frame building houses physics, biology, and environmental science classrooms; a culinary lab; a makerspace; and an engineering lab.
Measure A funded the building, which opened for students this fall.
“It’s been three years, but they were very, very worth it to have all of these facilities,” said M-A Principal Simone Rick-Kennel at the Oct. 30 dedication ceremony.
District officials also dedicated a new turf field, tennis courts and a main kitchen.
Students can access the latest STEAM tools in the new facility, the district said.
The STEAM building spaces are “extremely flexible” with “large rolling lab tables,” said physics teacher Joseph Vanderway. The spaces include collaborative workspaces, sinks and gas.
Kari Brown, another M-A physics teacher, said that last year she was in a regular nonscience classroom with standard desks. The desks in her new classroom make it easier to access electrical outlets for projects, she said. Classrooms are equipped with microphones for teachers. There’s even an eye hook strong enough to hang objects that are the weight of a bowling ball. This is something she’d previously seen only on college campuses, she said,
Many school districts create programs focused on only four of the five components emphasized in a STEAM program, leaving art out of the equation and referring to the program as STEM. But Sequoia district officials realized that it is important to include an art component in the program as they were researching the curriculum for the district’s new school, the TIDE Academy, which is set to open next school year, said Superintendent Mary Streshly. Design plays a big part in engineering and science, and that usually involves art skills, she said.
“If you can learn a little bit of design, you will be very sought after,” she said.”It also keeps the humanities in this world of AI (artificial intelligence).”
Art is also an entry point for students who might not think they’re good at math and science, she said.
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Comments
Atherton: Lindenwood
on Nov 12, 2018 at 8:21 pm
on Nov 12, 2018 at 8:21 pm
Congratulations to M-A High School on the opening of the STEAM building. As a '67 grad, I was strongly influenced and encouraged to pursue science by Dr. Harry Wong, who helped many of us get access to exceptional resources like SRI and grants and summer programs at UC campuses. As important as critical thinking and logic is in science, however, art has always been important to me as a means of fostering creativity and imagination, which are essential to seeing "outside the box" when trying to come up with novel solutions to difficult problems.