Event Highlight - Community STEM Night
Do you know about all the amazing STEM things happening at the Watertown Public Schools? Did you know 1,000 heads of lettuce are grown every week in the school's freight farm? Or about the school's award-winning robotics team, or the culinary program that provided food at the state house recently, or the student club working on designing a net zero accessory dwelling unit to showcase at the Lemelson-MIT Center?
I sat down with three people to learn more about the 2nd Annual Community STEM Night where people can come to learn about all this and much more going on at the schools. I'm joined by Lynsey Kraemer, the Science Curriculum Coordinator for grades 6-12, Laura Alderson, the CTE Director for Watertown Public Schools, and Elizabeth Kaplan, the K-5 Science Coordinator, K-8 Math Coordinator, and the Farm to School Coordinator.
Released April 8th, 2026
(Click here to listen on streaming apps) (Full transcript below)
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Come join the Community STEM Night on April 29th to learn about all this and much more through conversations and hands-on experiences! Community STEM Night is organized through a partnership between the Watertown Business Coalition and the Watertown Public Schools. The event is on Wednesday, April 29th from 530pm to 730pm at the Watertown Middle School.
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Thanks to podcast promotional partners the Watertown Business Coalition and Watertown News.
This program is supported in part by a grant from the Watertown Cultural Council, a local agency which is supported by the Mass Cultural Council, a state agency.
Transcript
Matt 0:07
Hi there. Welcome to the Little Local Conversations Podcast. I'm your host, Matt Hanna. Every episode I sit down for a conversation to discover the people, places, stories, and ideas of Watertown. This episode is an event highlight episode for the Community STEM Night happening at the Middle School on April 29th from 5.30 to 7.30 p.m. There's a lot going on that night, and I sat down with three of the educators who are involved with planning the event and involved with the day-to-day STEM activities and programming within our schools. So I’ll let them introduce themselves, then we'll get into the conversation.
Matt 0:41
I’m sitting here today with some of the people involved with the STEM Night that’s going to be happening at the school this month. So why don't you go down the line and introduce yourselves?
Lynsey 0:48
Hi, I'm Lynsey Kraemer. I'm the Science Curriculum Coordinator for grades 6 through 12 here in Watertown.
Laura 0:54
Hi, I'm Laura Alderson. I'm the CTE director for Watertown Public Schools.
Matt 0:59
And what does CTE stand for?
Laura 1:00
Career and technical education.
Elizabeth 1:03
I'm Elizabeth Kaplan. I am the K-5 science coordinator, K-8 Math Coordinator, and the Farm to School Coordinator here in Watertown.
Matt 1:11
Great. Let's talk about briefly what is STEM night.
Lynsey 1:15
So we are having our second annual Community STEM Night on April 29th from 5:30 to 7:30 at Watertown Middle School. And it's a collaboration with the WBC, Watertown Business Coalition, and the Watertown Public Schools. We're specifically hoping for families of elementary and middle school students to come so that they can learn about our secondary STEM programs in the schools.
Matt 1:42
Great. And what is the experience when someone walks in? Is there five tables? Is there a hundred tables? How long should they spend there? You know, take us through when you walk in, what is the experience like when you come to one of these events?
Laura 1:53
So there'll be three spaces. One is in the auditorium, the other in the cafeteria, and also in the main hallway of the middle school. So the auditorium will have three panels. They are Life Sciences, the Freight Farm, and Clean Energy. In the cafeteria will be roughly 12 tables of information from various organizations. The chemistry teachers will be doing an experiment. The math department has a coding table. Medical assisting will be doing health screenings and demonstrating their new virtual reality system. The culinary students will provide the food, which was a big hit last year. There are CoLAB tables.
Elizabeth 2:37
I think it's a nice mix of learning about things in the community, learning about things in Watertown schools with hands-on experiences. So there's food to eat made by students, but there's also hands-on experiments that students can do, learning about community organizations and businesses. So there's a lot to do there, whether you want to sit and listen to a panel and ask some questions or just snack and chat with people, there's a lot to do.
Laura 3:02
And then in the third space, which is the main hallway there, the robotics team will be there with their large robot, which is award-winning this year, as well as some informational pieces on the curriculum.
Lynsey 3:13
K-12 in the STEM subjects.
Matt 3:17
Yeah. So you said this is directed at elementary and middle school. What are you hoping that someone coming to this event will get out of it?
Elizabeth 3:24
Well, we have an elementary STEM night that is really for elementary students to do math and science with their families. And I think this is a next step in that event. So I am hoping that, I primarily work at the elementary level, that our elementary families can attend and get excited about what's to come in middle school and high school. Even some of our middle school students go and get excited about the programs that they can be involved in, whether it's taking our high-tech farming course, which is related to our freight farm, or entering the culinary program. So really seeing that we have a lot to offer in the STEM and CTE worlds in Watertown for the younger families.
Laura 4:00
And from my perspective, I always want to have kids start as early as possible to start thinking about careers. How do their careers fit into how they want to plan their education?
Matt 4:10
Gotcha. So why don't you tell us a little bit about your involvement with some of the programs that are involved in STEM Night?
Elizabeth 4:16
Absolutely. So for STEM Night, what I'm mostly involved in in my role in Watertown is our farm to school program. So Watertown's been recognized in many places across the state as having a really high-quality farm to school program that involves our school gardens at the elementary. It involves our district-wide composting. We compost everything that we eat and use in our schools. And then our new addition is our freight farm, which is a high-tech container that grows lettuce hydroponically. So we are growing about a thousand heads of lettuce a week. Our students are learning to farm and learning about agricultural careers. And we are selling our lettuce back to the cafeteria so all of our students are able to eat super local, nutritious lettuce. One other thing that's coming up is we are having a farmer's market pop-up in partnership with Livewell Watertown and the farmer's market. So our community will get to eat our lettuce. We donate to the community fridge. So this is high tech. It is all about STEM, but it is also really about environmental stewardship and food justice. So it's a really exciting new thing that I think the community has heard about and wants to learn more about.
Matt 5:23
How did the freight farm come about? Because that's not a typical thing, right?
Elizabeth 5:27
It was, yeah, it was many, many years of planning with our farm to school team and our superintendent is very supportive and very involved with it. So we spent about two years planning for it and then we finally acquired it at the end of last school year through many trials and tribulations. And then we were trained. I received a grant from the Healey Driscoll administration to help fund our staffing for it and supplies. It's been a hard project to do, but totally gratifying for the students and the community. And the lettuce is delicious. We will have panels to view that we will have from the freight farm on display so people can see and touch the lettuce that we're growing.
Matt 6:04
What ages are involved in the freight farm and what are their different roles in it?
Elizabeth 6:07
So it's really just mostly juniors and seniors who have elected to take the high-tech farming elective. However, K to 12, our students interact with our farm to school program. All of our elementary students have lessons tied to the gardens. So we're trying to really grow our students to be environmental stewards and be aware of STEM careers within agricultural and food justice.
Matt 6:30
Is there any particular story with the freight farm? Any interaction with a student or a politician or anything that's just been interesting for you?
Elizabeth 6:37
Yeah, we hosted the Lieutenant Governor as well as the Secretaries of Education, Early Childhood Ed, Agriculture, the head of the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education for an event that was a large press conference. They got to visit the freight farm. We got a lot of press. You know, they were really impressed with what we're doing in Watertown. Watertown doesn't have a lot of wide open green space, but what we're doing with what we have here, they were really impressed with. We were all over social media for that. The students had just started taking the class for the first time and they got to meet these high-level officials and talk about their work. So it's great.
Matt 7:14
How are the students who are in the freight farm, working in the freight farm? What's their experience with it? How are they enjoying it?
Elizabeth 7:19
Yeah, I've heard from families of students in the class and I've spoken to them and they are really happy with it. They have to get on a bus driven by their teacher from the high school and be driven across town to the Phillips building where the freight farm is. So it's a lot of work to be in the class, but they really enjoy it. They've enjoyed the opportunities. Our lettuce was served at the statehouse for a mass agricultural day. So they're enjoying learning about it. And it's a really unique situation, I think, here in Watertown.
Lynsey 7:46
Can I add to that? So the classes fall within the science department. And so I recently observed the students in the freight farm and in the classroom adjacent to the freight farm. And they were able to demonstrate for me how to harvest the lettuce from the panel and instruct me so that I could do the same thing. So it was great to be there with them and learn right alongside them.
Matt 8:08
Yeah, that's awesome. So why don't we take a step back and talk about the origins of this? How did STEM Night first come about and why was there a need for it?
Lynsey 8:18
So as you know, last year was our first STEM night at the Middle School. But prior to that, I had partnered as one of the board members of CoLAB, which is a partnership between Watertown High School math and science departments, and local biotech scientists to work with WBC for their annual spring life science showcase. And so I had attended that and spoken at that a few times along with other members from CoLAB, including several students who have been pretty active in the CoLAB organization. And then the two heads of WBC wanted to increase involvement in that event, have more students and families participate. So we brainstormed and we invited Elizabeth and Laura and other school members as well as community members to think about how we could really expand this event to showcase all that Watertown Public Schools is doing related to STEM.
Laura 9:16
I mean, over the years, the 11 years that I've been here, we've done STEM events every year. Sometimes in coordination with the state DESC, they have a week that's STEM week, typically in October, which if anybody knows anybody who works in education, October is a really, really difficult time to pull something together for. So we've struggled a little bit in terms of how do we bring STEM into kids every day so that they understand what STEM means and what opportunities there are for them. And so when the Watertown Business Coalition came to us, it was kind of an aha moment for me, like, oh, a little bit of help, help with the coordination and also with the community piece, which is huge. It just gelled last year. And then we revisited all that this year and said, these are the things we could do better. These are the things we want to change, and these are the things we want to keep the same and maybe enhance. I'm excited about this year. Last year was amazing, but I'm really excited about this year.
Lynsey 10:14
I agree.
Matt 10:15
Yeah. Now, are there any other programs that are going to be here at STEM Night that you want to give a little more information about?
Laura 10:22
A couple of the programs from a career in tech ed department standpoint are that we received a rather large grant from the Mass CEC, the Clean Energy Center, this year for this year and next year. And we are bringing clean energy education into both our pre-engineering program and our carpentry program. And we've created something called the High Performance Building Initiative Club. I think there's 25 to 30 students who are involved in that now. And they're going to be designing and building an accessory dwelling unit that is net zero and hoping to showcase that invention at the Lemelson-MIT Center, which has partnered with us on this grant in June of 2027, May or June of 2027. And that will be part of the panel about clean energy.
Laura 11:14
The culinary program has obviously really taken off and gained in popularity and exposure. Our chef, Kevin Marston, is an amazing educator and an amazing chef. And he's just a really great person to build this program. And so we're potentially going to be building this into a full vocational program in the next couple of years. We were just at the state house yesterday at the Day on the Hill. Roughly 20 vocational programs were showcased to feed about 450 people at the state house yesterday and we were the only non-full-on vocational program that was invited. And they used the lettuce from the freight farm and served a salad, which was very good. And then the medical assisting program, which is one of our most popular vocational programs in the high school right now. We are now up to two teachers. We have kids in the program from sophomore year through senior year. We have one senior who's going to be our first internship student in the vocational area this year.
Matt 12:13
You have anything to add on the programs?
Lynsey 12:15
I do. So one of the big highlights from last year, in addition to the robotics group, was the AP chemistry students do a series of demonstrations over the course of the evening and they repeat them. So you don't have to be there right at the start to see all of them. And it was very popular last year. There were several rows of people standing near the tables to watch.
Matt 12:37
What were some of those? Could you explain those experiments a little bit?
Lynsey 12:39
Sure. So one of them involves a reaction with several liquids. So the liquids change color over the course of the demonstration. Another one is called elephant toothpaste, where several liquids are mixed together and hydrogen peroxide decomposes and results in a lot of foam being created through the production of oxygen gas and water vapor, enough to brush an elephant's teeth, hence the name. So those are two of them. And then this year, something that we're adding to STEM night, Laura and I are working together to recruit a couple of Watertown Public Schools graduates to talk about what they have gone on to do in various STEM fields post-Watertown to show a continuation of the trajectory after grade 12. I'm excited for that addition at STEM night. Some of our collaborators felt like that would be a welcome addition this year.
Lynsey 13:35
And then as I mentioned, CoLAB will be there. Some of the things that CoLAB does with our students is different local scientists come in and present to our engineering, medical assisting, math, and science classes about both their educational path and career path and what they do daily in their role. Since there are so many life science and biotech companies in Watertown and the surrounding areas. And then we also have a mentoring program where students can apply and be matched with a local scientist to meet monthly and work on goals to help the student while they're in high school. And then we have some field trips to local life science companies and biotech firms so that students can see what it looks like in some of the buildings they go by every day here in Watertown.
Matt 14:21
Yeah, it's great. We have that. We're one of the life science destinations in the whole country. And it's so having that access is really cool. Yeah. So you have a little information to share about the robotics program.
Laura 14:32
So yes, the FIRST Robotics program, which is not a curricular program, it's extracurricular, so it's outside of the school day. And it is run by our coaches, Travis Norris, and some of the other adults from the community who are mentors and assistant coaches. And they recently attended the Greater Boston FIRST Robotics Competition. The robot faced continuous challenges as different parts broke in almost every single match. On Sunday morning, the team made the decision to fully redesign and rebuild their intake mechanism in the pit during the competition. There were a lot of students in the pit all working hard to get things done. They were the first pick of an alliance, alliance 6, and pulled off a win in the elimination bracket, thanks to their autonomous routine and some excellent defense by their drive team. They earned the Imagery Award for Outstanding Visual Aesthetic. And the description of that award is the team doesn't just walk the walk, they fly through the competition. From build to the bot, their cohesive themed branding was polished, playful, and flowed seamlessly through every detail of their presence. They make a quacktastic splash. And that's a reference to the fact that the team name is called the KwarQs and their mascot is a duck.
Matt 15:51
Gotcha. And so you said this is an extracurricular club at the school. How often does that meet? Is it throughout the whole school year or?
Laura 15:57
They do meet throughout the whole school year. They start to get up and running in the fall every year. The competition season is about six weeks from January into February. And that is a pretty intense period of time where the adults probably are there every day and the kids come as they can to get the robot built. It's a very strict program about what they can do, when they can do it, how long they can do it, and when they have to stop. And then they enter the competition with that. So it is a full year thing, but that six weeks is intense.
Lynsey 16:29
And anyone who's in high school is eligible to join the club. You don't need to have certain skills. It's open to students nine through twelve.
Laura 16:38
Actually, eight through twelve. They even accept eighth graders.
Matt 16:41
So there's a lot of programs to come check out at STEM Night and learn about and have some hands-on experiences with them. Is there anything else to mention?
Laura 16:49
I neglected to mention our.
Matt 16:50
Where we’re sitting right now.
Laura 16:52
Radio and TV broadcasting program, which we call digital media communication. You will see students in this program walking around at STEM Night interviewing participants and interviewing people who are doing presentations and things. They'll be taking pictures and then they create the social media presence about it and things for the principals' newsletters and things like that.
Lynsey 17:16
And the teacher of the program is the emcee for our panels, Mike Riley.
Laura 17:21
Mike Riley, Sarge. He is the voice of the Patriots and the Revolution at Gillette Stadium.
Lynsey 17:28
I would also add that, we mentioned this briefly at the beginning, but there will be a table where students can try out different coding programs. That's a nice way that our schools are building on the hour of code that our elementary students experience in December each year. And then we have another student club, Women in STEM, that was started several years ago by some female high school students, and they will have a table at the event as well.
Matt 17:58
What are you most excited about with STEM night?
Lynsey 18:02
I love seeing, as a secondary educator, I love seeing young students there with their parents excited to find out about the different programs that we offer and interact with the hands-on activities we have during the event, since that's not something I see in my daily role.
Laura 18:19
I don't know that I have anything specific. I'm excited about all of it. I love to see the students, especially the high school students in some of the vocational programs, come out and actually be able to demonstrate what they're learning in classes and to show others how well they're doing. It's been a really great experience to see the growth and self-confidence of some of the students in the vocational programs, how they've come such a long way over a couple of years in these programs.
Lynsey 18:47
I would also add, I think for all three of us, this is a lot of time and energy that we spend. We meet every other week with the WBC and other community members to plan for this event for three or four months. And so it was really successful. Last year was the first year. And I think we're all excited to see that it hopefully grows this year and we have more participants and interest as this becomes kind of a known event in Watertown.
Matt 19:17
So, again, for people who want to come check out STEM Night, bring their kids, learn what's going on at the schools, what they have to look forward to, or maybe they're already a student they didn't know this was going on, they can come check it out. They can come get these hands-on experiences, listen to these panels, get to know the teachers and the people running these programs, people in the community at companies who are already doing this for their job and career. Just hope that they come out, enjoy it. And thank you for taking the time to sit down and share about STEM Night. Thank you for taking the time to set up the event and make it a nice community event. And any last thoughts you want to say before we say goodbye to the listeners?
Lynsey 19:51
We're just very excited to share all that we have to offer here in Watertown Public Schools, specifically within STEM and CTE. We look forward to seeing you.
Laura 20:00
Please come and check it out.
Lynsey 20:02
Bye. Thank you, Matt, for having us on today.
Laura 20:03
Thank you, Matt. We really appreciate it.
Matt 20:06
So that's it for my conversation with Lynsey, Laura, and Elizabeth. Again, the event is on April 29th from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. at the Watertown Middle School. If you want to find out more information and more details about the event, you can head on over to WatertownBusinessCoalition.com, click on their events, and you'll see STEM Night there. I'll also put a link in the show notes for you. And if you'd like to hear more episodes of the podcast, you can find all of that over at LittleLocalConversations.com.
Matt 20:35
All right, and I want to give a few shout outs here to wrap things up. I want to give a thank you to the Watertown Cultural Council, who have given me a grant this year to help support the podcast. So I want to give them the appropriate credit, which is, this program is supported in part by a grant from the Watertown Cultural Council, a local agency, which is supported by the Mass Cultural Council, a state agency. You can find out more about them at WatertownCulturalCouncil.org and MassCulturalCouncil.org. And a couple more shout outs to promotional partners. First, the Watertown Business Coalition. Their motto is Community is Our Business. Find out more about them at WatertownBusinessCoalition.com. And lastly, Watertown News, which is a Watertown focused online newspaper. It's a great place to keep up to date with everything going on in the city. Check that out at WatertownMANews.com. So that's it. Until next time, take care.
