Summer at St. Louis U. High was a busy time for the maintenance staff and construction crews, as they tackled both large scale and small scale renovation and construction projects.

Their first project, which began just a week after the school year ended, was the renovation of science rooms S301 and S304.

“What we did was a whole remodel on those two classrooms, a top down approach from anything from furniture to fixtures to tech electronics, TVs, and monitors—anything that makes the classroom learning experience better for the students and the teacher as well,” said Director of Facilities Joe Rankin.

The SLUH maintenance staff commenced the project by getting the grunt work out of the way, such as replacing the floor, lights, ceiling tiles, faucets, electricity, and gas connection. The walls received a fresh coat of paint to make the rooms more aesthetically pleasing.

New tables were installed to replace the desks. The tables can alternate between lecture and pod formation. According to science teacher Mary Russo, one of the goals for the room was to provide more flex for different learning scenarios.

The desks also include white boards which come with several possibilities to enhance the learning experience for students.

“White boarding is an interactive teaching technique that is a little more kinesthetic than taking notes,” said Russo. “So now we have these whiteboards that can help students learn a lot more.”

Technology has become a more critical part of the classroom experience. Both rooms received technology upgrades. New short throw projectors were installed, as were large flat-screen televisions.

For physics teacher Paul Baudendistel, a classroom with TVs is completely new to him.

“I’ve never had TVs in my room before, so I don’t know how I am going to use them,” said Baudendistel. “But I made the same comment to Mr. Anderson, he’s a veteran teacher who has taught in classrooms with limited technology for years, and he said, ‘I didn’t have them before; now I use them all the time.”       

Baudendistel plans to integrate the TVs into his daily classes shortly. For instance, he could use them to show lab data from one particular group, whereas the alternative would be the whole class crowding around one computer screen.

This is the third straight summer in which science rooms have been renovated, a project that is part of the Go Forth initiative that was