About Mrs. Mallett

Can I tell you how much I love STEAM? It combines all my favorite elements together. If I had to choose between teaching only art, or only engineering, or only science, I wouldn’t! Put all the subjects together and it’s like a super power! The class is fun, engaging, hands-on and action packed. The question I get asked the most is, “when is the next STEAM class?”

I grew up loving and living STEAM. My father and brother are rocket scientists. I attended rocket launches my entire childhood through adulthood. My summers were spent gardening, sewing, building a tree house, drying fruit, taking apart my bicycle and putting it back together. Currently my Dad grows giant thousand-pound pumpkins. I attend the Giant Pumpkin Weigh-Off, Pumpkin Regatta and Pumpkin Smash each fall.

I began teaching pre-k through eighth grade STEAM in 2009. This was years before STEAM became the popular subject. The focus of my entire Masters Degree was developing curriculum that integrated the arts. I became a California Credentialed teacher with a Master’s Degree in Curriculum Design in 2011. I worked for a summer at Disney Learning to assist Imagineers in their challenge of integrating the visual arts standards into a new i-pad app. Disney published my art lesson based on the children’s book, Iggy Peck Architect, in their parent magazine.

I was pleasantly surprised to find that with the release of Next Generation Science Standards included an Engineering Design Challenge as well as a phenomena. I’ve been featuring phenomena in my lessons from the beginning. I select phenomena that students ARE interested in and want to know more about! My classes include my custom educational art videos. Most classes include recent, fun, entertaining you-tube clips that tie the art, science and engineering together and show that STEAM is going on every day and is relevant and current. There are employment opportunities and the sky is the limit. Students love seeing how their engineer challenges map over to real world problems that need solutions today.

STEAM is an exciting hands-on, fast paced environment where children spend time thinking, collaborating, inventing, experimenting, designing and painting. I feel honored that I get to watch the next generation of passionate artists, scientists and engineers grow before my eyes.