John F. Kennedy Elementary School Moves to the Forefront of STEAM (STEM + ARTS) Education With Level Up Village Partnership

John F. Kennedy (JFK) Elementary School has announced a partnership with Level Up Village (LUV) to offer pioneering global STEAM (STEM + arts) course as part of the After School program. JFK will offer Global Inventors/3D Printing beginning the week of February 11, 2016. Throughout the course, students will collaborate one-on-one with partner students from one of LUV’s Global Partner organizations in a developing country via video message exchange.

“By partnering with Level Up Village, we are helping our students develop 21st century skills through hands-on STEAM projects and global collaboration,” said Oletha Walker, Challenge Resource Teacher, at JFK. “The global component of this program is especially exciting and will give students the extraordinary opportunity to work together with their partners, while simultaneously learning about their lives and daily life in the developing world.”

In Global Inventore, students learn to harness the power of 3D printing, one of the most innovative technologies of our time, to engineer solutions to real life problems. In this exciting course, they learn how to use Computer Aided Design (CAD) software to create, print and 3D print a toy, a backpack tag and a solar powered light source in collaboration with a global partner student from a developing country.

Level Up Village empowers children to make a difference in the world with courses that promote design thinking and one-to-one collaboration on real-world problems between K-9 students in the U.S. and Global Partner students in 23 countries. U.S. school partners directly sponsor Global STEAM education in developing countries through LUV’s “take a class, give a class” model: a portion of the tuition is used to deliver the same class to students at one of LUV’s Global Partners, many of whom are living on less than $2 a day.

“We are proud to bring together students from U.S. schools with peers from our Global Partner organizations. While their lives may be very different, they soon discover that they have a lot in common and much to learn from each other,” said Amy McCooe, Co-Founder, Level Up Village. “Our cutting-edge STEAM courses offer schools fully developed curricula, comprehensive teaching training and our experienced management of the global collaboration process.”

About Level Up Village:

Level Up Village (LUV) delivers pioneering Global STEAM (STEM + Arts) enrichment courses that promote design thinking and one-to-one collaboration on real-world problems between K-9 students in the U.S. and partner students in developing countries. Launched in 2012, LUV runs courses during school, after-school and in the summer at more than 100 U.S. schools in 15 states, with over 30 Global Partner organizations in 23 countries. More information is available at levelupvillage.com.

About Windsor Public Schools:

Windsor Public Schools serves nearly 4,000 students in the community of Windsor, Connecticut, a town located in north central Connecticut between Hartford and Springfield, Massachusetts. Windsor Public Schools is comprised of six schools: Oliver Ellsworth School, Poquonock School, Clover Street School, John F. Kennedy School, Sage Park Middle School, and Windsor High School. The mission of Windsor Public Schools is to develop the genius in every child and to create life-long learners. For more information about the Windsor Board of Education and any of its schools, please visit www.windsorct.org.