Bayside P-12 College is celebrating the opening of its new STEM building, though will have to wait until the new school year to use it.
The building, which will house science, technology, engineering and maths classes at Bayside’s Williamstown campus, was officially opened on Friday, November 29.
While the opening came too late for students to use it this year, Bayside assistant principal Natalie Hammond said everyone at the school was looking forward to finally using the new building in 2025.
“We’re really happy to have it opening next year,” said Ms Hammond who highlighted the building’s flexibility and space for collaborative learning as its most exciting features.
“It has two classrooms, but the way the building’s been designed, even the hallway is a functional space. We tried to design it so it could be used in many different ways,” said Ms Hammond, using the higher ceiling at one end of the building to allow for experiments using height, as an example.
She said Bayside approached STEM subjects as a way to teach students real world problem solving skills and while traditional classrooms made this difficult, the new facility would encourage it.
“It just means that we can have large numbers of students working on projects and see STEM as an approach to real world problems and this is how people work in the real world. We don’t work in silos, we work in teams.”
Students in years 7 to 9 will use the new STEM building when it begins hosting classes at the start of the 2025 school year.
Cade Lucas.
