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The Samuel and Margaret Gorn Foundation recently awarded a grant to Radcliffe Creek School (RCS) to revitalize the School’s makerspace by creating a new STEM workshop within it. The $35,771 grant will create the dedicated space—named “The Samuel and Margaret Gorn STEM Workshop”—and fund a new climate control system, room renovations, as well as furnishings to bring RCS’ makerspace, which had closed due to challenges that arose during the pandemic, back to life.
“Radcliffe Creek’s makerspace has traditionally been at the heart of the immersive learning experience we offer,” Head of School, Peter Thayer, explained, “Multisensory instruction is a key component at RCS, and this generous gift will provide our students with an exciting opportunity to learn STEM concepts in physics and arithmetic in a practical, hands-on way. We are grateful to the Samuel and Margaret Gorn Foundation for their support of this impactful project.”
This award will also make it possible for RCS to purchase the tools and materials needed to create a woodshop and bring the School’s traditional boat building program back to life. For many years, a longtime faculty member offered a wooden boatbuilding program where students learned to build and repair traditional vessels, such as wooden skiffs and log canoes. This year, two volunteers from the community, bringing decades of wooden boatbuilding experience, have begun leading the new boatbuilding course, “STEM to Stern: Boatbuilding 101.” Offered this spring to a group of sixth, seventh and eighth graders, the weekly after school program works with students to build a 12-foot wooden skiff.
Dr. Susan Grant, president of the Gorn Foundation, remarked, “The board and I are genuinely excited to support RCS’s mission to provide the opportunity for hands-on instruction that fosters and enhances learning for their students.”
After the skiff is completed this spring, the School will offer the new STEM workshop for faculty to utilize for future enrichment classes and creative woodworking projects, such as building bird houses and bat boxes to support wildlife on the school’s 11-acre wooded campus.
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