Watching trout grow from eggs to fingerlings and then releasing them in ponds, sending a balloon with monitoring devices onboard into the upper stratosphere and then recovering it, being a part of the decisions that affect your school and in the process, learning how to become good, productive citizens.
If that sounds like a class you’d like your children to attend, you’ll find it in Sarah Jarvis’ STEAM classroom on the west wing at Shoshoni Elementary School.
STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Math) is a step up from the standard STEM, which includes everything aside from the art component.
Jarvis was a standout athlete at Shoshoni as Sarah Thompson. She graduated in 2013 and attended Casper College for a year before transferring to Central Wyoming. She graduated from CWC, then life led her to Philadelphia.
“I moved to Philly to care for grandma, then went into medical work for a while,” Jarvis said.
Fremont 24 superintendent Bruce Thoren is perhaps the most active administrator you’ll ever encounter when it comes to vocational education, and programs like Career and Technical Education (CTE) and STEAM.
“Bruce stopped me one day and asked me to run the summer school workforce program,” Jarvis said. “He said you should be in an educator role.”
That was the catalyst that led Sarah to three bachelor’s degrees.
She started a dual degree program in elementary education and STEM through the University of Wyoming. There were scholarships available.
“If I got the scholarship, I decided I’d get a degree in education,” Jarvis said.
She added a third degree in Environmental and Natural Resources.
“STEM was my favorite,” Jarvis said. “It’s cool to see science in the classroom.”
Her move, and Shoshoni’s move to STEAM, came with the departure of three staff members. An art teacher, a science teacher, and a technology specialist all left the district.
“The void made me say, hey how can we make this work?” she said. “It’s beautiful how it all came together. We changed STEM to STEAM.”
One of the projects the third grade worked on was designing animal-crossing bridges for highways. An NCRS engineer came to class to work with the students.
“How do you make science visually appealing? Jarvis asked. “You bring in art.”
Jarvis isn’t an artist, but SEL (Social and Emotional Learning) support specialist Brianna Larsen is.
“All of us wear numerous hats,” Larsen said. “We love to juggle. I use art in SEL.”
A program that Jarvis is passionate about is called Leader in Me.
“It’s a program we adopted one-and-a-half years ago in the fall of 2024. It showcases growing leadership in our younger students,” Jarvis said. “Finding the genius, the area the child is gifted in, and hopefully leading the community someday.”
The Student Lighthouse program is a method to achieve the goal of finding and involving each child with their unique talents.
Lighthouse groups are divided into elementary, middle school, and high school sections.
“It’s like student council at every grade,” Jarvis said. “They get the choice of what they want their school to be. We ask the kids what are the things teachers and staff do that we could do?”
In the process, the students learn soft skills, the things that aren’t taught in a regular classroom but that are essential to having a healthy social life and eventually become adept at the workplace.
“As an educator if I was asked what would you want your students to be, I would say to hopefully have a job, a family and be part of their community,” Jarvis said.
Janene Weaver is a fifth-grade teacher who sends her students to Jarvis’s STEAM class. She enjoys the project-based learning aspect of STEAM.
“We’re taking what we have in the four walls of our school into the real world,” Weaver said.
The trout-raising project is a great example of transitioning from a large aquarium in the corner of a classroom to planting three to four-inch trout in public ponds.
“We work with a game warden,” Jarvis said. “They learned about micro and macro environments.”
One of the more exciting projects for the kids was the high-altitude balloon launch. They watched it rise high into the air, eventually disappearing and were able to monitor the telemetrics as it flew 100,000 feet above them.
When the balloon landed, the kids loaded a bus and headed towards the locator beacon on the balloon.
“We hiked about five miles to retrieve it in late November,” Jarvis said.
Most of the projects remain a lot closer to the ground, including an overnight camping trip to the Circle J Ranch near Ten Sleep, where they practice orienting skills that they learned and read about in class.
Some students read to others at breakfast.
“Being read to is so important to students just learning how to read and some of our students don’t get that at home,” Jarvis said. “The older kids read to them during breakfast. Both those reading and those getting read to benefit.”
They have a community service learning component where students have partnerships with businesses in the community. One of those is gathering aluminum cans to take to Federal Auto Recycling in Riverton.
“The proceeds go to families in need,” Jarvis said. “We raise a few dollars but Brett Skaggs (owner of Federal Auto Recycling) always makes a generous donation to the program.”
Watching fish grow, balloons fly and learning how to become a better citizen while taking ownership in your school is all in a day’s work for the Students of Shoshoni participating in STEAM.
“This school district does a phenomenal job at ‘growing their own.’ I would truly not be here if it weren’t for Bruce Thoren seeing the potential in me, and never in my dreams did I think I would flourish and absolutely love the work I am blessed to be part of,” Jarvis said. “If it weren’t for the leadership/support and encouragement for Andrea Gilbertson. Shoshoni is truly one of a kind.”
You might say it’s full “steam” ahead for the next generation of Wranglers.