READING, Pa.- It’s the first day of school for many districts in Berks County, including the Reading School District. This year, for the first time, staff welcomed students to RSD’s brand-new Innovation Academy.<\/p>\n
“I fell in love with this school in 7th grade,” says sophomore Cassandra Velez.<\/p>\n
“That’s the first time I saw the design of how this school’s going to turn out, and then I knew that I wanted to be a student at this school,\u201d Velez remarked.<\/p>\n
Students attending the Innovation Academy toured the facility Monday. Classes begin Tuesday, and many spaces are set up to offer hands-on learning opportunities.<\/p>\n
“I feel like this really gives the students an upper hand in their future and the jobs that they can apply to and what they can get,” says sophomore Joshua Alamanzar.<\/p>\n
“[Also] how it will help them as well with colleges because they’re going to give us a lot of hands-on experiences,\u201d Alamanzar added.<\/p>\n
Amanda Helm, an associate principal at Reading’s Innovation Academy, says the school\u2019s mission is to connect education to opportunity.<\/p>\n
“We’re taking this idea of a much bigger high school and bringing it down into much smaller academies where students get to engage in really targeted career pathway development,” says Helm.<\/p>\n
About 500 students are attending the STEM academy for its debut year.<\/p>\n
“It really feels like you can be noticed in this school and get the help you may need,” says Alamanzar.<\/p>\n
“I think that it’s going to help a lot of kids decide what they want to be in the future,” Velez tells WFMZ.<\/p>\n
“I’m just excited to see where we can go,” says Helm.<\/p>\n
“We have such a phenomenal team here and a lot of people who really believe in what we’re doing with this programming,\u201d Helm remarked.<\/p>\n
The long-planned school is on North 9th Street at the site of the former Reading Outlet Center.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"READING, Pa.- It’s the first day of school for many districts in Berks County, including the Reading School…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":271538,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[349,94738,114331,48724,57469,65618,128,130,129,3439,72720,12041,3315],"class_list":["post-271537","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-reading","tag-berks-county","tag-career-pathways","tag-education-opportunity","tag-first-day-of-school","tag-hands-on-learning","tag-innovation-academy","tag-reading-city","tag-reading-city-headlines","tag-reading-city-news","tag-reading-school-district","tag-school-opening","tag-stem","tag-students"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/271537","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=271537"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/271537\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/271538"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=271537"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=271537"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=271537"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}