THIRD GRADERS Skye Coleman and Spencer Wilson are pictured talking to each other about how they can engineer a “Bobby Dropper” that will slow a bobby pin’s fall to the floor. (Photo by Bob Vlach)

PRESCHOOLER Mary Armstrong is pictured reading. “By the time these kiddos get to kindergarten, they are ready to go,” St. Leo Preschool Director Kara Jetton says. (Photo by Bob Vlach)

AFTER SKETCHING a well-known work of art, most students will use oil crayons that look like oil paints to reproduce the paintings. St. Leo School seventh grader Zeke Christenson is pictured. (Photo by Bob Vlach)

REPRODUCING ART helps students sharpen their technical skills, according to St. Leo art teacher Rosie Fedorchuk. She says all famous artists honed their skills by reproducing art. “It also helps them feel a connection to the artists,” she says in response to a question about why she wants her students reproducing art. (Photo by Bob Vlach)

ST. LEO FIFTH GRADERS Dallas Musgrave, Maddox Healy, and Daniel Borth, pictured left to right, held tuning forks up to their ears so they could listen to vibrating sound that each produces. (Photo by Bob Vlach)

By Bob Vlach

Woodford Sun Staff

During the Sun’s recent visit to St. Leo School, students were working on their STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) or – if an art component was added – STEAM projects with the next grade up.

So kindergarteners and first graders were working on their projects together in February. Older students worked with their younger buddies a month earlier.

St. Leo’s 147 students spend one day each month doing STEM and STEAM projects. “It’s just a great problem-solving … activity for them to do,” says Interim Principal Helena DiBiasie. “It really makes them think, but it’s also fun.”

Fifth graders were identifying different types of energy in science teacher Tracy Borth’s classroom. Listening to tuning forks was an opportunity for them to identify why that sound energy happens. Whether the forks produce higher or lower-pitched vibrating sounds, they learn, depends on the size of the forks.

“… It’s learning through discovery,” says DiBiasie, a former science teacher. Hearing the different sounds while holding tuning forks next to their ears, adds Borth, “is much better” than learning without a hands-on experience.

Like all subject areas, science is integrated into everything that students are learning at St. Leo, she says.

In religion class, students have been learning about the value of caring for creation, which Borth says, “is all around us.”

“… Science,” she continues, “is much more than a subject.” When students talk about the weather, they also gain an understanding that science “is an everyday event” and a part of their daily lives, she says.

Moreover, problem-solving in science applies to anything in life – and students can apply its methodology of critical thinking to math and other subject areas, DiBiasie says.

In art class, students were doing research on artists of their choosing. Their research will help them “learn about artistic styles” and gain a deeper understanding of history, says art and music teacher Rosie Fedorchuk, before adding, “Art history is history.”

Fifth and sixth graders are doing research on artists whose works are displayed at the Cincinnati Art Museum because they will be going there on a field trip.

Fedorchuk says she’ll collaborate with language arts teacher Jonathon Pults, who will provide guidance to students when they are writing about their artists based on research they did in art class. Because what students learn in art class is “not just art,” she tells the Sun. “It’s literature. It’s writing skills. It’s history …”

She and St. Leo’s social studies teacher are planning a field trip to the Huntertown Community Interpretative Park so students can visit and learn about a community (just down the road from their school) where formerly enslaved African Americans lived, with the added experience of singing a spiritual.

In third and fourth grades, students were sharing their problem-solving ideas with a partner on how to engineer a “Bobby Dropper” that will slow a bobby pin’s fall to the floor.

As they started working on their creative solutions, third grade teacher Ashleigh Siskar tells them, “You have the freedom to think …”

As he watches his teaching colleague, fourth grade teacher Harry Craft says giving older students – even third graders – the responsibility of mentoring students as young as kindergarten is beneficial to both. And it’s not uncommon for older students to watch out for their younger buddy before and after school, says DiBiasie. After a while, she adds a close relationship forms that is “just natural” between the older and younger students.

First graders have been learning about shadows, and when the Sun stopped by their classroom, teacher Emilyann Miller says they were getting ready to go outside so they could trace their shadows. It’s all part of a science lesson focused on light – artificial light and natural sunlight, Miller explains.

For the youngest students at St. Leo, the learning begins in three preschool classes. The school day begins when the 58 preschool students join older buddies for Morning Prayer.

On the day of the Sun’s visit, students were learning about the number 10. However, the much more significant goal, Preschool Director Kara Jetton says, is “teaching them how to function within a school day. By the time these kiddos get to kindergarten, they are ready to go. They’re ready to learn on day one,” because, as DiBiasie says, they also learn how to transition from one teacher to another – and “do school.”

“That’s my number one,” says Jetton, who’s been in early childhood education since 1994, “is to make sure that they love school. Because when they love school, everything else is kind of easy and falls into place.”

St. Leo students in every grade were honoring a student at Lexington Catholic High School battling cancer by wearing green, his favorite color. That morning, St. Leo had a prayer service for him because “we’re praying for a miracle to happen,” says 11-year-old Evie Zink.

A Peacemaker Club has been organized at St. Leo School to spread peace by caring for people less-fortunate than themselves. “My hope,” says Fedorchuk, “is that the entire middle school becomes a part of the (after-school) club eventually,” because what this club does to help other people here and elsewhere supports “who we are (as a school and church) … and they (our students) love it.”

Asked to describe St. Leo’s journey to celebrating its 100th anniversary as a school this year, DiBiasie says, “Absolutely incredible.”

St. Leo School’s history began in a house where the Versailles Police Station is now located. A school was later built on that site across the street from St. Leo Catholic Church. Both the church and, later, the school moved to the same Huntertown Road campus.

To mark the milestone, St. Leo had a Centennial Picnic for the church and school, as well as a large celebration with a mass and then a dinner in Parish Hall at the end of Catholic Schools Week.

DiBiasie came out of retirement to return for one more year as principal when Leo Labrillazo retired last May, so St. Leo had sufficient time to do a search and hire a good candidate to lead St. Leo in its 101st year, she says.