It was a busy Spring season for LakeStreet Youth Labs at GMCC! As we kick off LakeStreet Youth Labs STEAM Summer 2024 this week, let’s recap everything we did in the Spring.

We began an exciting new partnership with the nearby Andersen United Middle School and Minneapolis Beacons, Parks & Recreation, & Community Education, offering programs on Mondays and Tuesdays exclusively for Andersen students. These weekly after school sessions ran from January 29 through May 13, 2024.

Multimedia Expression Mondays

On Mondays, LSYL staff picked the students up at Andersen and walked them over to GMCC for Multimedia Expression (or M.E.), an art/media centered class taught by GMCC staff member Len Sanqui. Each week, students focused on a different medium for creative expression, such as painting, photography, stop motion, sculpture, and collage. The class explored a combination of physical and digital art/media skills, as well as learning about related careers.

Students explored painting and illustration, using different mediums (acrylic paint, oil pastels, and pencil/pen). They also learned about the history of painted illustrated portraits and famous examples. 

One week was focused on digital photography, using rented DSLR cameras from SPNN (Saint Paul Neighborhood Network). Students learned the basics of photography, composition, and camera & lights operation, and discussed all the different professions in the photography field.

“Now I really want to get a camera!”

After photography, students practiced photo editing, using Pixlr Editor to transform their photographs from the previous week. GMCC was able to get a free subscription through Pixlr Academy, granting our students access to the browser-based editing service and tutorials. Students experimented with Pixlr’s different tools to draw, apply filters, and adjust their photos. 

For the last few weeks, students had free days where they could choose to work on projects in a medium of their choice. They also had a day to create collages out of scrap paper, magazines/books, and other materials. On the last session, we put up a gallery of all the artwork students had made during the class and had ice cream to celebrate.

“I don’t usually like collage but this was a lot of fun!”

Fatima, a 6th grade participant, told us, “”I just have to say that this is my favorite after-school class.” Students completed post-surveys from GMCC, where they rated our teachers an average of 4.2 out of 5, engagement/fun level a 4.3 out of 5, and class structure a 4.6 out of 5. 

70% of students said they were interested in returning to future GMCC programs and one student wrote that their favorite part was “making new friends and doing new things”. 

Andersen United also surveyed their students about their overall opinions on Beacons afterschool programs. 7 of the students identified Multimedia Expression as their favorite out of all of the afterschool classes, due to it being fun, relaxing/quiet, and a place to learn about new artists and techniques.

Students enjoyed the class so much that the school even requested another round of sessions! Multimedia Expression 2.0 (or M.E. 2.0) ran from April 8 through May 13. 

Since some students returned from the first round of the class, we introduced new subjects for the students to explore. This included murals, different forms of storytelling, comics, sculpture & set design, and stop motion animation.

 

This time, we surveyed students at the beginning and the end of the class so we could compare results. Overall, students showed growth in their interest in different mediums, specifically digital media, as well as an increased confidence in their art skills and knowledge of creative careers.

Work Hard, Play Hard! Tuesdays

On Tuesdays, GMCC continued to engage Andersen students in partnership with Stewart Park. Work Hard, Play Hard combined homework help, brain games, and indoor/outdoor recreation to create a balance between learning & fun and set smart goals with youth to help them meet educational standards.

Students received individualized tutoring/homework help and played a variety of brain games like Chess, Set, Bananagrams, Sudoku, Mobi, and other logic puzzles. 

Recreation activities included tag games, yoga, a dance party, relay races, a scavenger hunt, and field trips including a visit to the Minneapolis sculpture garden, bowling, and a picnic at Minnehaha Falls.

Bonus Sessions

After the end of the Monday and Tuesday sessions, Andersen requested two weeks of bonus sessions to offer something for students who still needed after school activities before the semester ended. 

GMCC hosted a Game Day where students could choose from a selection of card, board, group games, and Jackbox. We also held an Open Art Studio day where students could work on projects of their choice. 

For two days, we had Art & Anime sessions and played the Studio Ghibli movie Ponyo for the students, provided popcorn, and let them create Ghibli/anime-inspired art.

STEAM Saturdays

We hosted another round of Saturday programming for 8 weeks, now called STEAM Saturdays! 

Elementary 

LYL staff taught students curriculum provided by the Bell Museum. The lesson about Energy consisted of students bouncing balls and potential energy. For the Light Filtering lesson, students drew using colored markers and viewed them through blue & red filters, observing how they changed.

Students also played with Hot Wheels to learn about physics and momentum.

Northern Clay Center visited and taught students how to make clay sculptures of animals & other fun objects. Students got to take home their sculptures after they were glazed & fired!

Art Start challenged students to get creative and make their own Rube Goldberg machines using a variety of tubes, papers, wire, and unusual scraps and test them out with marbles.

Articulture showed students how to weave wall hangings using handheld cardboard looms and different kinds of yarn.

Middle and High School

Teen students spent every Saturday exploring coding & Lego robotics with createMPLS, who returned for yet another season of youth programming with GMCC! 

They built the Lego cars and spent the weeks tweaking the code to make their cars faster and more efficient. They even held races with each other and built obstacle courses for the cars to go through!

Spring Break Camp

On April 2nd & 3rd, GMCC launched our first LakeStreet Youth Labs Spring Break Camp! This free program provided full-day care, from 9 AM-4 PM, for two days during the holiday break.

15 students, from 1st-8th grade, attended the camp and 10 of these students had returned from previous LYL programming. It was great to see familiar faces!

During the two days, we played fun games, ate yummy snacks & pizza, and went on a field trip to the Bell Museum. At the museum’s Omnitheater, we got to watch Back from the Brink, a documentary about different animal species that were saved from near extinction.

At GMCC, we did some STEAM activities with several returning partner organizations. Art Start did crafts with the students; they created interactive dioramas of the recent solar-eclipse and decorated old CDs. 

Northern Clay Center returned to make mugs and initial plates with the teen students. 

Minnesota Department of Transportation came back to teach students about bridges and the importance of infrastructure, and then led them in a model bridge-building activity. The two groups raced each other to see who could build their bridge the fastest, and crawled on the bridges to test their strength.

Our first Spring Break Camp, and all of Spring 2024’s youth programming, was overall a huge success! We got to explore amazing new partnerships and meet new students, while strengthening relationships with recurring partners and spending time with old friends. 

Check our website for weekly updates from our 2024 STEAM Summer Camp!