St. John’s takes students head back to school for STREAM Academy

KENMORE — While school had only just ended less than a week before, the halls of St. John the Baptist School came alive with excitement as students returned for a three-day long Summer STREAM Academy session the first week of summer vacation. As a STREAM school, St. John’s offers regular STREAM Academy courses to the students. STREAM Academy is an after school enrichment program, providing students with a project-based learning approach to a specific topic. STREAM Academy allows the students to dive deeper into a unit of study and explore it using a variety of learning modalities.

For the first time, St. John’s offered a summer session of these STREAM Academy courses to bridge the gap between the end of the school year and the start of many more traditional summer camps. At this special summer session, three academy courses were offered to students from pre-K to grade five  – STREAM Survival Camp, Camp Crazy Daze, and Disney Magic Makers: Parks Edition.

“My favorite part was building a solar oven to make caramel smores and creating models of an amusement park attraction,” said incoming fourth grader Madelyn Bogdan, excitedly. 

Annie participated in Disney Magic Makers: Parks Edition with St. John’s first grade teacher, Melissa Richey. In this academy, Richey took her students on a once-in-a-lifetime trip to the Walt Disney World Resort while never leaving St. John’s.

They tried their hand at being Disney Imagineers, designing their own attraction, stamped their EPCOT passport by making caramel smores in Germany, and visited Animal Kingdom while excavating dinosaur fossils.

Another group of students participated in STREAM Survival Camp with pre-K teachers, Angel Panowicz and Samantha Testa, who took their students on a camping adventure, earning badges each day, showing off what they learned. 

Incoming first grader Joey Amato shared, “I loved finding things in nature to make into boats. We had to figure out how to put our boat together so that it actually could float. It was fun to work with my friends to build something new.” 

Panowicz and Testa were thrilled with the hard work that their students put in and even more thrilled with the fun their students had.

The final STREAM Academy course that was offered this summer, Camp Crazy Daze was taught by St. John’s fourth grade teacher Sharon Domin, reading teacher Holly Pawlowski, and Spanish teacher Allyson Stanz. Students participated in a variety of activities, from water balloon math challenges to an art project where they offered kind words of encouragement to their classmates. When asked to name her favorite part, incoming fourth grader Madelyn Baer said, “I loved at the end of the week when the teachers dressed up in inflatable costumes.” 

“We wanted to celebrate all that they learned and how hard they worked throughout the week,” said Pawlowski.

Summer STREAM was a success at St. John’s and is sure to continue into summer vacations in years to come.