By Paul Joyce, STREAM Director, Silverton Public School
Silverton is a unique location nestled at 9318’ elevation deep in the San Juan Mountains in beautiful Southwest Colorado. Spending the day in Silverton is a memorable experience, spending the summer here is a defining experience. Winters are for only the hardiest and most committed winter lovers, but the summers are perfect with highs in the 70’s, a lively tourist economy and endless opportunities to explore the mountains.
The Silverton School is a small public school located in Silverton, Colorado, in the heart of the San Juan mountain range. The school has approximately 60 students in grades K-12 and is housed in an historic 3 story red brick building with all the 21st Century amenities. In 2002, the Silverton School joined a network of 115 Expeditionary Learning schools across the country. This national model works well with our school’s setting, small class sizes, and overall goals for academic excellence.
Silverton Public School is intentionally attempting to build a Young Maker culture in our school.
Maker Space will be part of our summer youth program, which is scheduled with summer school and other summer activities structured around summer school (for example Challenger Soccer Camp, Summer Ecology Camp and Adventure Mondays which include activities such as visits to our local Discovery Museum, a day of whitewater rafting, rock climbing etc) The Maker Corps interns will be welcome and encouraged to participate in all of our programs as facilitator/ mentors along with professional staff.
We will schedule Maker Space in and around summer school, which runs Monday through Thursday for the months of June and July for 3-4 hours, depending on student times and needs. We will offer Maker Space as a part of the summer school curriculum, allowing all of our students to participate.
We are planning a maker space week in August where the kids meet with the Maker Corps every day for a week (Mon-Thurs), making cool things, punk science, Arduino, exploring salvaged printers, computers and children’s toys, investigating/ exploring local projects.
Silverton is home to A Theatre Group (ATG) with a long history of doing theatre with our students. ATG will put on 2-4 performances a summer in Silverton with shows throughout the day for locals and tourists (Silverton sees 800-1200 tourists a day in the summer via the Durango Silverton narrow gauge railroad). ATG uses Theatre student interns from Colorado University in Boulder to put on the shows and do most of the acting and some of the playwriting.
The school has a long history of working together with ATG, We are planning to get the Maker Corps interns together with the Theatre Group interns (again, Silverton is a very small town, so you are going to be mingling already) and put on some maker “science theatre”, or find some way to share the combined experiences of some of the kids who will be participating in both ATG and Maker Space. This will give us another opportunity to share the Maker experience with our town and the broader community.
Do not hesitate to call, email or text
Paul Joyce
STREAM Director
Silverton Public School
970-387-5544 (w)
970-769-8474 (c)
www.silvertonschool.org
pjoyce@silvertonschool.org
Silverton School makes scholastic educations 25 coolest schools list:
http://www.scholastic.com/coolschools/
STREAM is Science, Technology, Recreation, Engineering, Art and Math
a program for Silverton School made possible by the
21st Century Community Learning Center (CCLC) Grant.
Maker Ed is thrilled to welcome the Silverton School as a new Maker Corps Host Site for 2014. Applications for all Maker Corps Members will open Monday, February 3, and close on March 21. Click here for more information, and to apply. – Steve
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