By MATT PIKE
St. Joseph Post
The Mosaic Life Care Foundation is getting set to launch another year of its popular STEAM After-School events at EmpowerU in downtown St. Joseph.
Program Coordinator Devran Brower says STEAM After-School helps students develop an interest in science, technology, electronics, arts, and mathematics.
"So, we provide opportunities to engage in programming and in modules that kids may not have in their schools, may not have available," Brower tells KFEQ/St. Joseph Post. "And so, they're a lot of fun, everything we do is based off fun, it's really self-guided. yes, we do supervise and create some structure for the students, but we really want them to explore these modules and have fun together and even collaborate to learn."
Brower says the program has grown in popularity, but they never have to turn students away
"We are fortunate we have a wonderful team of facilitators that come together to do these things, so we don't really ever run out of space, we may open up another room," Brower says.
Brower says in particular the Lego WeDo activities are very popular with students in the third through fifth grade students.
"The cool thing is with those resources we have, if one room gets full and we usually cap that around 10 to 12 students, then we'll open up another room and they can be doing the same thing together and even interact with those other classmates," Brower points out.
STEAM After-School began shortly after the pandemic to help get students back to bonding in a classroom after not being able to attend school for some time.
Brower says activities students will get to do are ones they won't find in a normal classroom, such as Lego WeDo which involves coding.
"So, they can create things that actually accomplish or overcome challenges," Brower explains. "I know one module you create a streetsweeper, so how do we clean up streets, how can we create a machine that will do this for us, things like that."
There are also virtual reality stations for students, which Brower says always feature some new applications
"So even if a student came a year ago or two, chances are there's something new they haven't seen before," Brower says.
The program is open to students in third through eighth grades and will run for six weeks between October 17th and November 28th from 4:30 to 6pm.
Walk ins are accepted but Brower says its highly recommend registering your student if interested. You can register at MLC Foundation DOT com.