William Penn STEAM Academy

This school year, Mr. Weider and Mrs. Shovestull’s 9th grade Flex classes participated in a community service initiative in which students cleaned up around the school campus and Penn Park. This activity provided students with a meaningful opportunity to give back to their community and served as a valuable experience throughout the school year.

Mrs. Shovestull’s STEAM Honors Biology students conducted a fetal pig dissection to investigate the structure and function of major body systems, including the digestive, respiratory, circulatory, and reproductive systems. Through this hands-on laboratory experience, students compared animal anatomy to human anatomy while applying Pennsylvania STEELS standards focused on organization, interaction, and function within living organisms.

Check out what our amazing students have to say about our PBL project this year!

York City School District students built and installed 10 little libraries across district schools, pairing literacy with hands-on STEAM and community pride. FULL STORY ⬇️

Check us out tonight live before the 6pm news!

What started as an idea to bring literacy and community engagement together became something so much bigger. Over the course of this year, the students in Mrs. Martinez and Ms. Tyson's Flex classes collaborated across engineering, construction, design, art, data analytics, public relations, and technology to make the PBL Project, “Stories in the Streets” Little Library Project, a reality.

Students designed, built, painted, researched, organized, and problem-solved every step of the way, all with the goal of increasing access to books and building a stronger sense of community throughout the district. As of today, each YCSD K-8, high school, HS communities in school, and district admin building has their own Little Library!

Today, the project reached its culmination as students officially installed and stocked the Little Libraries across our district. Seeing their hard work become a permanent part of the community was an incredible moment and a reflection of student leadership, creativity, collaboration, and service learning in action.

We are so proud of the dedication our students showed throughout this project and grateful to everyone who supported this initiative along the way. We can’t wait to see these libraries filled with stories, shared experiences, and opportunities for connection for years to come.

Mr. Weider’s Honors World History class created a Holocaust timeline. They learned the impact of the genocide on Jewish people and other people during the Holocaust. It was a valuable lesson for the students to learn about the Holocaust and the persecution from it.

In Mrs. Shovestull’s Honors Biology class, students explored the structure and components of DNA, gaining a deeper understanding of how genetic information is organized and passed from one generation to the next.

In STEAM Honors Biology, students completed cell organelle analogy projects using the idea of a cell as a city. Projects were evaluated and awarded 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place. The top three projects are below:

Students in Mrs. Shovestull’s STEAM Honors Biology class explored the properties of the cell membrane through a hands-on bubble lab activity.

It was a beautiful day for a trip to DC to tour the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, National Museum of African American History and Culture, Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, and the Smithsonian National Museum of American History.