STEAM school marks end of year with rocket launch
Ninth-grade students at the Community STE(A)M Academy in Xenia spent a sunny Friday morning shooting off model rockets, as both a capstone to the class’ career tech project about aerospace science and rocketry and a culmination of the STE(A)M school’s first year in existence.
Randy Boadway of Wright Stuff Rocketeers said the students spent the morning learning how to load the rockets with small motors filled with black powder, an electrical ignition charge, parachute and plug.
The Wright Stuff Rocketeers introduce model rocket flying to 500 kids every year, Boadway said.
“We do thousands and thousands of flights every year,” he said. “When we put all our flights together for a whole year, and we’re talking thousands and thousands of flights, it still doesn’t equal one real rocket motor.”
Over the course of their studies, the Xenia STE(A)M students have not only learned about the science of flying rockets but the history of rocketry and the development of rockets during the Cold War.
The STEAM acronym adds “arts,” to the traditional STEM topics of science, technology, engineering and mathematics. The school uses a “neighborhood” system to teach its students, in which teachers can set up customized classrooms, depending on the topic they want to teach.
Like the Dayton Regional Stem School or Global Impact STEM School in Springfield, CSA-Xenia is a tuition-free public school open to any student in the state.
The Xenia STE(A)M Academy is ending its first year with approximately 130 students. The school received 230 applications for students prior to the start of the school year, but enrollment dropped to 152 students following a lack of bus transportation.
The school is on track to add its planned 4th and 5th grade as well as 10th grade next school year, and has 120 applications for new students for the 2024-25 school year, Director Jeremy Ervin said.
Additionally, the school is on track for renovations to its Church Street property, which will become both athletic facilities and classrooms for students in grades 6-9 once renovations are complete.
While children are still assessed to the state standards, learning at the school is project-based, and spans multiple grades. Many of the projects are based on real-life applications, and some even include project work in the community.
For example, all grades participated in a year-long project on food insecurity, studying economics, science and growing food in hydroponic towers, comparing container gardens with soil, and more.
“Every grade level looks at a different essential question to answer,” Ervin said Friday. “They just go way beyond what we ever thought they would do, because they’re passionate about it, and they love it and see it as a way to help.”