KCI Hosts WRDSB STEM Competition

Written by: Maya Paddon

KCI staff and students are familiar with various annual school-wide traditions and festivities, including Limelight, Summer Jam, and ONEKCI assemblies. While these events undoubtedly reflect the individuality of and diverse talents within the school community, new KCI activities can bring forth unique ideas, encourage involvement in specific subjects or extracurriculars, and highlight hard-working students. 

Thus, The Edge set out to cover the recent WRDSB-wide STEM competition, hosted and prepared entirely by KCI staff and students. 

The event was held on Saturday, November 23rd, with a wide range of secondary schools throughout the region in attendance. The STEM competition was thoughtfully planned in the months leading up to it by an array of KCI members; the majority of whom were involved in the science club. Mr. Jackson and Ms. Rowlandson were among the staff supervisors. 

When asked about the preparation leading up to the event, Nita Kraemer, one of the primary organizers, explained that the process was occasionally difficult, but ultimately highly rewarding: “There was definitely a lot of work that went into it. It was months of work. We started back in June of 2023. That’s when the idea started. And then June of 2024 is when we started getting everything ready for the competition,” she noted, adding, “I was working on it for the whole summer, which was fun. It did take up quite a bit of time because competitions are not easy to run. But they are rewarding from the fact that you see everyone enjoy it afterwards.” 

For competitors, the day began with a “Just Dance” activity, where members gathered in the auditorium to commence the event with energy and positivity.  From there, the competition itself consisted of several challenges containing content from specific branches of STEM, including an engineering activity and a math “relay race.” Students were also offered a free lunch, and during this time, had the opportunity to visit the “university fair” and participate in an additional science lab. 

Whilst discussing her key takeaways from the STEM competition, Sarah Boehm, the volunteer coordinator of the event, brought up the ecology activity she assisted in organizing: “It was really cool to watch everyone who came to observe what we had collected and the astonishment on their faces when seeing all the little guys that live in our ponds and lakes,” she mentioned. Sarah also admired the collaborative effort and passion exhibited by participants and volunteers, commenting, “The commitment and dedication shown by the KCI students and staff to run the competition was definitely visible throughout the day. All of the amazing student volunteers and especially the student organisers put so much effort into making the day fun and challenging for the competitors.”

Concurrently, Nita highlighted how other KCI clubs contributed to the organization of the competition: “We had a lot of the clubs from KCI make the challenges. We had science club make the competitions for biology, chemistry, and physics, we had engineering club make the engineering challenge, and we got the leaders from each of those clubs to run the events,” she explained. The competition also included a “Stellar Trivia” station produced by KCI’s Trivia club. 

Overall, both Sarah and Nita expressed their appreciation towards the staff that supported and helped arrange the event. Sarah noted, “I am so grateful to Ms Rowlandson and Mr Jackson for all their ideas and support. It was also amazing to see all the science teachers and other staff who have helped design challenges and all the staff who came out the day of [the event] to help out!”

Meanwhile, Nita mentioned that the students from the science club opted to pay their thanks to some of the staff contributors during the closing ceremony: “We got Ms. Rowlandson and Mr. Jackson little erlenmeyer flasks that had their names engraved on them. It was just nice because you could see how proud they were.”

Ultimately, Nita, Sarah, and all individuals involved were evidently content and satisfied with how the event turned out. Sarah explained that she was very happy with the “sportsmanship” and “amazing commitment and love of all things science and STEM” exhibited by participants and volunteers alike. Nita, on the other hand, expressed that the end result was something she was quite proud of, saying, “I got that feeling that all of my hard work paid off.”

In terms of a potential WRDSB STEM competition in the future, Nita communicated her enthusiasm towards the idea, but with a few alterations: “I think that for next year, it would be nice if another school made something similar.” She concluded, “I think it would be nice if it became a WRDSB tradition instead of just a KCI tradition.”