STEM
STEM At EBIA: Make It, Test It, Explain It
At EBIA, students develop scientific and engineering habits by working with ideas in tangible ways. They ask questions and make predictions. They design, build, collect evidence, analyze results, revise, and explain what they learned.
Science In Action
Sound Waves You Can Hear
Students have designed and built musical instruments to explore how vibration, frequency, and engineering choices affect sound. The project turns an abstract physics concept into something students can build, test, hear, and improve.
Energy You Can Measure
Students have engineered and tested solar ovens to investigate energy conservation. They make design decisions, observe performance, compare results, and use evidence to think about why one design works differently from another.
Our science curricula give students concrete phenomena to investigate. In OpenSciEd, sixth graders can build scaled box models to explore how a one-way mirror reflects and transmits light. Seventh graders can use bath bombs to model chemical reactions and conservation of matter. Eighth graders can investigate collisions and design solutions that reduce or measure impact forces. Stanford SCALE adds integrated project-based units such as Colossal Collisions, Traveling Through Space, Save the Andes!, and A Warmer World.
Teacher Innovation That Gets Funded
EBIA educators have a track record of turning strong ideas into funded student experiences. Science teacher Michelle Fitts received a Philanthropic Ventures Foundation Environmental Science Resource Grant that supported a California Academy of Sciences experience for 39 Science Olympiad students. In 2025, she also received a Science Teacher Resource Grant for a hands-on Gram-stain microbiology investigation. EBIA educator Noor Fakih was featured as an Oakland Public Education Fund A to Z grantee for a sustainable-agriculture project. That work transformed the school garden into a place for hands-on environmental learning.
That culture of initiative extends further: DonorsChoose reports 145 teacher projects funded at EBIA, including 45 projects from Mrs. Fitts alone.
The Engineering Design Cycle
Students practice a repeatable process:
Ask: What problem are we trying to solve?
Research: What do we already know?
Imagine: What approaches could work?
Build: How can we turn an idea into a testable model?
Test: What does the evidence tell us?
Improve: What should we change and why?
Communicate: How do we explain our design and our reasoning?
Across projects, teachers reinforce a common cycle of asking questions, researching, imagining, building, testing, improving, and communicating.
Science Olympiad
Students who want an additional competitive STEM challenge can extend their learning through Science Olympiad.
Art + Science For All
EBIA approaches STEM through a broader STEAM lens. Creativity, visual communication, design, and aesthetics are part of innovation too. Students experience art alongside science and engineering so they can develop both analytical and creative ways of thinking.
Art strengthens the creative side of EBIA’s STEAM model through design, critique, visual communication, and purposeful creation.
Mathematics As A Tool
Mathematics helps students measure, model, compare, predict, and make sense of data. All students build reasoning and problem-solving skills that support work across STEM subjects. Qualified eighth-grade students also have access to an Algebra pathway.
Mathematics supports modeling, measurement, data analysis, and problem-solving across STEM learning.
Technology With Purpose
Students use technology to create, investigate, analyze data, communicate ideas, build models, and present what they have learned.
OpenSciEd offers computer-science-integrated units that use technology to collect data, model systems, and test explanations. One eighth-grade collisions unit can include micro:bits and sensor systems. Students design, build, and test those systems to measure forces. EBIA can use these extensions when they fit the unit, available technology, and student readiness.
STEM Beyond One Class Period
Students can continue exploring STEM through Science Olympiad, design challenges, afterschool enrichment, visiting experts, and field experiences that connect classroom concepts to the Bay Area around them.