St. Agnes Cathedral School welcomes its new STEM Lab and Science Center

Administrators at St. Agnes Cathedral School recently gave the Herald a sneak peek at its brand new STEM Lab and Science Center before its official unveiling in February.

“It’s exciting,” Cecilia St. John, principal of the St. Agnes school, said. “The kids just love having the space.”

Designs for the project were initially proposed in 2018, but as a result of the pandemic, the plans were put on pause until the latter half of 2021.

“We were totally shut down,” St. John recalled. “When we came back in September 2020, we were half remote and social distancing, so there was no construction going on during the 2020-21 school year.”

The new lab is a state-of-the-art classroom that offers students an environment in which to learn and explore new skills in science, technology, engineering and math through hands-on lessons.

STEM instructor Amanda Fina said that what she enjoys most about teaching at St. Agnes is the way students are encouraged to learn in an interactive and engaging way.

“The kids all have great ideas, and I just want to make them a reality,” Fina said. “Their gears are turning in different ways that you don’t even see in the regular classroom setting.”

During the Herald’s visit, she was teaching seventh-graders how to make a working fishing reel.

Fina has a degree in general and special education from St. Joseph’s University, and is studying for a master’s in STEM education at CUNY Empire State College.

In St. Agnes’s new Science Center, next door to the STEM Lab, students were busy conducting an experiment designed to help them visualize the process of osmosis. Maryann Pasquale, the seventh-grade science teacher, divided the students into groups, each of which was supplied with an egg and a graduated cylinder containing 250 milliliters of vinegar.

After placing the egg in the vinegar solution, students watched as vinegar dissolved the shell and solidified the egg’s semi-permeable membrane.

“It’s really cool,” seventh-grader Charlie Durnan said of the class. “Instead of doing (experiments) in our old classroom, it’s a new environment, and it gives us more opportunities to learn stuff by seeing it visually, not just learning about it in a textbook.”

As a result of the construction, the school had additional space to relocate its art class from its former location, on the other side of the cafeteria, to its new setting, just across the hall from the science lab.

The new art classroom is also much larger, giving art teacher Sandra Collins more room to store materials. There’s also a kiln for creating pottery, as well as a sink where students can clean up. 

During the tour of the new classrooms, Collins was teaching third-graders about Abraham Lincoln. The students were tasked with drawing the president either on the face of a $5 bill, in front of the American flag or next to a log cabin similar to the one in which he was born.

St. John said that the school also plans to convert the former art room into a space for music lessons in the near future. 

“I’m just so happy this is done,” she said, “and I’m really grateful to the parent community for helping make it a reality.”

The school’s mothers and fathers clubs, St. John added, helped raise the money needed to complete the project.

Tours of the new classrooms will be offered during the school’s annual open house this Sunday from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., and Bishop John O. Barres, of the Diocese of Rockville Centre, will help cut the ribbon at the official unveiling of the STEM Lab and Science Center on Feb. 2. For more information, visit StAgnes-School.org.