Collaboration Is Key!
At WMSI, we believe that a variety of perspectives and people are essential for a strong learning environment. Not only does that include hiring employees with diverse skills and backgrounds, but it also means bringing in local experts and professionals to assist in teaching our students. By utilizing the knowledge of these experts, we give our students an informative and fun window into fascinating topics that they may never have explored before.
While our team is constantly expanding our STEAM knowledge, we understand there is room to grow as educators! We recently ran a workshop on woodturning, a practice where you use a lathe and handheld carving tools to create symmetrical wooden objects like bowls, cups, and tool handles. We were lucky enough to bring in Tanner Thompson, the shop teacher at Profile High School, who used his extensive knowledge to provide our students with a much deeper understanding of woodworking.
We invited Tanner back for our popular Guitar Making Workshop, where he assisted attendees with the process of assembling and customizing their guitars.
Tanner helping a student with their guitar assembly process
This summer during our Machine Magic Camp, we brought in multiple experts to teach the students about coding, circuitry, and robotics, emphasizing how we can translate instructions into code to tell computers what we want them to do. Paula Gauto, a senior software engineer, and Carly Drzewiecki, a senior data scientist, were invited to assist in teaching WMSI campers about coding, making the subjects more approachable and easy to learn. Our students loved creating their own computer games and controlling robots with the knowledge they gained!
Paula Gauto instructing students during the Machine Magic Camp
Collaboration is one of WMSI’s core values that we emphasize to our students in every program and embody as an organization. It’s with the help of experts like Tanner, Paula, and Carly, that we’re able to bring students high quality education on a wide variety of topics and continue to learn about these topics as they change over time. Thank you to everyone who’s worked with us over the years and helped teach our students all about STEAM!
