Weaver Lake Elementary awarded STEM Program Creative Leadership Grant

The arrival of June marks the first full school year in which Weaver Lake Elementary has used grant allocations from Crayola and the National Association of Elementary School Principals to develop newer science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) programs for its elementary students. “I wrote the grant to explore new applications for kids to promote critical thinking and multiple fields of investigation,” says Karla Juetten, Weaver Lake Elementary STEM curriculum coordinator. “The goal of using this new grant is aimed towards fostering early-professional development and deeper levels of critical thinking at earlier ages.” Crayola funded a two-day training session for teachers, hosted at the University of St. Thomas and at Leonardo’s Basement, to cultivate deeper creativity and hands-on exploration techniques that will integrate creative design processes into daily lessons. In the classroom students worked individually and in groups to solve tasks that challenge their engineering skills like never before. “Throughout a typical lesson, students comment, share and compare with their classmates while developing critical problem solving skills,” Juetten says of the new creative thinking lesson plans, which oftentimes translate smoothly into other courses and can be applied to academic fields outside of STEM.