Full STEAM Ahead at Glacier Gateway Elementary
In an era of diminished hands-on play, Columbia Falls librarian Denise Osborne is focusing on interactive science-based learning and the lifelong skills it can teach.
By Denali Sagner
Denise Osborne describes her classroom as “interactive” and “low-key.”
Osborne is a librarian and teacher at Glacier Gateway Elementary, one of two Columbia Falls elementary schools. For 16 years, she has sat at the helm of the Glacier Gateway library, teaching critical literacy skills and endowing a love of reading in her students.
In recent years, Osborne has also taught the school’s science, technology, engineering, art and math (STEAM) program, which gives second graders an opportunity to learn science-based skills through interactive lessons.
Through STEAM, Osborne and paraeducator Katrina Lamb are getting back to the basics, teaching students to work with their hands and explore the scientific world.
On a Thursday in late November, one of Osborne’s second grade classes explored engineering by building with materials from the natural world, including pinecones, sticks, rocks and shells.
Sprawled out across the library floor, students progressed through a series of challenges. First, they constructed a three-dimensional line with their supplies. Then, they created a curved shape. Next, they moved onto their “challenge items,” building structures from treehouses to buildings to cars. Once they completed all of their challenges, they moved onto a new material, switching out twigs for stones or leaves for wood blocks.
As students finished each challenge, they waved over Osborne and Lamb, proudly displaying their work. The second graders talked through their processes, asked questions and moved enthusiastically from shape to shape.
Osborne said she is “trying to build upon what the classroom teachers” teach and “enhance the curriculum in those areas” of science, engineering and art, which can sometimes get pushed to the wayside in favor of math and reading instruction.
This fall’s focus is engineering. In the spring, Osborne’s students will move onto science and the environment, making seed models and recycled art.
Interactive STEAM programming is increasingly important for students, Osborne said. Children are exposed to more screens and less hands-on play than ever before, which can hinder proper emotion and cognition.
Per a 2024 study by researchers at the Children’s Hospital of Orange County, children ages 8 to 12 spend around five-and-a-half hours on devices per day, up an hour from a decade earlier. Child psychologists warn that more screen time and less hands-on learning may lead to issues developing problem solving, observation and language skills.
“A lot of kids don’t build stuff as much as they used to,” Osborne said.
In her class, she hopes to offer a space for students to create and tinker, creating an environment grounded in questions and exploration rather than right or wrong answers. At the forefront of STEAM education is critical thinking, risk taking and problem solving.
Key to Osborne’s STEAM class is its home in Glacier Gateway’s library, a vast, airy space frame with windows and decorated with multicolored book displays.
The new Glacier Gateway Elementary opened early last year after voters in 2019 approved a $37 million bond to rebuild the school. In the newly built library, Osborne utilizes a plethora of flexible seating options, interactive tools and dynamic spaces, which she says only further the creativity of her STEAM lessons.
“We are truly blessed. The community was so supportive, and it’s a nice, nice building,” she said.
As her students move into the future, Osborne hopes they will take their STEAM skills with them. Some may develop a love for hands-on work. Others may learn problem solving and creativity, which will serve them in any path they take.
“My hope is that it introduces and intrigues those kids that love the hands-on, the creating, the inventing,” she said. “Maybe it inspires them to eventually seek those avenues and find their interests. That’s my hope.”