One Year Later: Full STEAM Ahead

Welcome to year 2. I am back and ready to blog about Code Club again. It’s going to be great.

I’m very excited to announce that I’ll be running Code Club again this year! In fact, Code Club is expanding and will be offered at the other elementary school in my district, too. I will be heading up three sessions of Code Club World this school year.  Two in the fall (one on each side of town) and one in the spring that combines 4th grade students from both schools.  This growth is due to a generous STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics with A for art/design) grant from Hypertherm, a local company, through their Hope Foundation.  With Hypertherm’s support, my school district is going to offer five different STEAM related, free!, after school programs for 1st through 4th graders.  My good friend, colleague, and former engineer, is coaching a Green Team (think sustainability) and an Engineering is Elementary program and I’m going to continue with Code Club and start a Young Inventor’s Club using the Young Inventors’ Program.  The fifth program is the Junior FIRST Lego League.  We estimate that 150-200 students will have the opportunity to participate in one of these programs over the course of the school year.  Sixty will have the opportunity to be Code Club members.

Our goal is to have a positive effect on student’s attitudes toward STEM careers, with our long-term hope that these programs can become part of the school curriculum.

So you can see that it’s going to be a great year with big goals. Code Club starts next month. Time to get ready to code.