SARATOGA SPRINGS — Mrs. Sherry Knotek has been technology and S.T.E.M. teacher at St. Clement’s School for 22 years and has been given generous grants to help expand the minds of her students. The S.T.E.M. program has been in existence for the last five years and the technology program has been around for all of Knotek’s tenure.
“We are so blessed here. We have a S.T.E.M. lab and we are a Project Lead the Way school, which is a national program that they continue on with at Saratoga high school. It’s basically an engineering program. For instance, our kids do augmented reality, they do virtual reality, we have 3D printers, we have a connection with the New England Aquarium and our 5th graders dissect sharks. We also have a huge robotics program, we have four different robots that the kids learn coding with,” Knotek explained, listing just a few of the things the S.T.E.M. lab has for her students.
These tech and engineering programs are available, in various forms, to every student at the school from pre-kindergarten through fifth grade.
“Oh my gosh! It’s great to be a teacher in this classroom because they never complain about coming here,” she laughed.
Funding is provided by The Higher Power Learning Grant via the Albany Diocese and other various small private grants.
“S.T.E.M. just gets them ready for the world that they are going to live in that doesn’t even exist today. If they can become independent thinkers and think with an engineering mind, then I think I have succeeded,” Knotek concluded.
