Welcome to The School of the Cathedral, a Catholic School in Baltimore, Maryland for students in preschool through Grade 8. As part of our mission to foster our students’ spiritual strength in the Catholic faith and to challenge them to achieve academic excellence, our admissions team is highlighting a new student each month to showcase our middle school STEM program, and the many possibilities available to your child. Today you get you meet Isabella, a Middle School Student engaged in our science program. 

My name is Isabella, and I am a 7th grader at The School of the Cathedral of Mary Our Queen. I would like to take this opportunity to share my science/STEM experience over this past year. One of my favorite units has been about cells. During class, we learned about the different parts of a cell and their functions. The cool part was when we moved into the science lab and did an experiment looking at both plant and animal cells. My lab partner and I created two wet mount slides for our microscope, one contained a tiny part of a leaf and the second was created from a swab that I took from my own cheek! I love going into the science lab because it is so hands-on. 

After our lab session, our Cell Unit wrapped up with a creative project called Cell City. In this project, we had to design a city. Each building represented a different organelle that matched the organelle’s function within the cell. To give you an example from my Cell City, called Plant Town, I placed a factory within the city which represented the mitochondria. If you think of a factory, you know that it can produce food and energy, just like mitochondria.

At Cathedral, our teachers try to make science fun. They do this by not just using our textbooks, but through hands-on experiments and games. Before I came to Cathedral, I did not find science interesting, but now I always wonder what we will be doing next!