Silver City, NM- Aldo Leopold Charter School's "Grant County Summer of Science" program is starting June 1. This community wide program supports several organizations, schools, libraries and businesses in their efforts to expand opportunities for Informal STEM Education programming for students in Grant County.

Project Community Partners include Silver City Public Library, Bayard Public Library, The Volunteer Center of Grant County, The Guadalupe Montessori School, Binary Circuits, The Jumping Cactus Café, Bikeworks and Aldo Leopold Charter School. Over 200 students grades K-12 from will participate in "Summer of Science" located at these different Community Partner sites. Students from the Cobre Consolidated, Silver Consolidated and Aldo Leopold School Districts are expected to participate. Parents and students wishing to register for individual projects should contact the community partners directly for details.

There will be a Community "Summer of Science" Presentation in August to celebrate the program's successes and present student work. The public is welcome to attend.

STEM stands for science, technology, engineering and math. STEM Education is of rapidly growing interest to educators, business leaders, students and parents. Studies show that Informal STEM Education helps students make important practical application connections to more formal classroom learning. It helps make math and science fun and.

Aldo Leopold Charter School's "Summer of Science" program is funded by the MacArthur Foundation. The program is one of only fourteen across the nation to be awarded a LRNG Innovation Challenge Grant from the National Writing Project (NWP) to develop, pilot, and share promising strategies to strengthen connected and deeper learning. The LRNG Innovation Challenge is a new program sponsored in partnership with the MacArthur Foundation and John Legend's Show Me Campaign.

"Out of school time, STEM Education is a fantastic way to engage students in math and science in fun and creative ways" stated Eric Ahner, Director of Aldo Leopold Charter School. "Our teachers and staff can work with our community partners to help them enhance their current programs and reach many more youth in our community and to help them become enthusiastic learners."

Aldo Leopold Charter School provides an engaging and challenging educational program emphasizing direct experience, inquiry learning, stimulation of the creative process, and stewardship of our community and natural environment. Their faculty is recognized nationally as being inovative and impactful because of their integrated aproach to teaching and their ability to incorporate direct experieince with classroom learning. The school has been in operation since 2014 and is a New Mexico Public Schools Charter School.

{pdf}mypdfs/2015-Summer-of-Science-Poster.pdf{/pdf}