Unique STEM School Ideaventions Academy Opening in Reston

Parents looking to foster their child’s inner engineer will have a new option this fall. A new school in Reston will offer a unique focus on STEM (science, technology, engineering and math).

Ideaventions Academy has existed for the last five years as an after-school and summer STEM program, but will now open its doors as a full-day private school for students in grades 4-8.

Ryan Heitz, founder of the Ideaventions program and academy, said the new school will offer a well-rounded education that includes reading, writing, humanities, art, music and other areas of learning, but reinforced that the school’s focus will be on STEM.

This fall, Ideaventions will become the only school in the D.C. metro area to offer full-year computer science as a core course in its curriculum. Meanwhile, few other schools offer any exposure to computer science for students as young as grade 4, according to Heitz.

Ideaventions will also provide full-year engineering courses for students, again offering education in that field to a younger group of students than any other school in the region.

“In some ways we feel like it’s very common sense, what a school should be,” Heitz said. “It’s been very challenging because there aren’t many other models out there; as far as I know we’re one of the only schools in the country teaching computer science that early.”

Heitz and his wife, Juliana, formed the Ideaventions after-school program upon returning to the Northern Virginia area they’d both once called home. Ryan is a University of Virginia graduate, while Juliana earned her degree from MIT.

Five years ago, the couple was struggling to find an adequate program to fulfill their son’s curiosity in STEM, so they formed their own.

“We couldn’t find anything that met those needs so we are creating that,” Heitz said in reflecting on Ideavention’s starting point. “We found a number of liberal arts schools but couldn’t find any schools that really taught them the way that we think they should be taught, through project-based learning and small class sizes.”

Students at Ideaventions will learn-by-doing in all fields, including the STEM classes like computer science, rather than being told material and asked to regurgitate it on exams.

Ryan insisted kids are capable of learning the basics of coding as young as grade 4, and students at Ideaventions will be able to regularly use simple computers called “Raspberry Pi” that cost less than $40 and are used specifically for coding. As Heitz described it, you turn the computer on and “pretty much go immediately into coding” simplifying the process and enabling the school to use these computers as a productive teaching tool.

The Heitzs broke ground on the Ideavention Academy’s new location on Pinecrest Road in Reston on May 18, and the school is slated to open for its first full academic year on Sept. 8. For more information on the new school — including renderings of the new building, tuition prices, the admissions process and more — visit its website here.

Image credit: Renderings courtesy of Ideaventions Academy