Todd Wackerman
Founder and Executive Director, STEM Library Lab
What do Slinkies, hula hoops, magnets and boxes of flashlights have in common? For math and science educator Todd Wackerman, they are some of the key items and instruments for STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) learning, and many are missing from teachers’ classrooms due to budget, time or space constraints.
A former public school teacher in New Orleans and Brooklyn, Wackerman created the STEM Library Lab (SLL) in 2018 after personally struggling to stock his own classroom with the tools he needed to teach. Those tools, from the common household items like calculators, to the obscure, like a box of primate skulls or Bunsen burners. All are items that teachers from all levels need and may not have due to budget or access restrictions.
Currently co-locating with Foundation Prep in the Nelson Elementary building in Gentilly, , SLL currently provides classroom resources to member educators at 16 schools across Greater New Orleans, with the capacity to supply many more. Teachers who visit SLL are able to receive training on various equipment and check out items when needed. They can also receive free items at SLL’s “Teacher Free-Store.”
“Our goal is to have 25 to 40 schools signed up,” Wackerman says. “We just would like to get the word out and reach as many as possible.”
Wackerman says his next goal is to bring learning tools directly to educators.
“We are piloting a delivery service,” he says. “It’s all about knocking down barriers to learning and giving teachers what they need, even if it’s just more time to teach.”