Over two weeks, AVI students built ramps, experimented with levers, and discovered that explaining how something works can be just as important as making it work. Here's what their latest Rube Goldberg challenges revealed about problem-solving, persistence, and hands-on STEM learning.

In Week 2 of AVI’s Rube Goldberg challenge, students moved beyond making a chain reaction work. Now their machines had a job to do, pushing students to test ideas, study cause and effect, and change their designs when something did not work as planned.

What happens when a Rube Goldberg machine does not work the first time? For Alabama Virtual Institute students, that is where some of the most important learning begins. See how students tested, revised, collaborated, and learned through Week 1 of AVI’s semester-long engineering challenge.

For SAFE program manager Dorinda Waldrop, Afterschool is about more than what happens with students each afternoon. It is about strengthening families, supporting working parents, and creating a place where kids can learn, move, create, and try again.

What can happen in the hours after the school bell? For Paul Morin, the answer reaches far beyond homework help. Afterschool can be where students discover careers, build confidence, solve real problems, and find adults who believe in them.

At Alabama Virtual Institute, checking in with a student's heart comes before any lesson. Director TraVonna Heard explains how AVI blends STEM and social-emotional learning, building the kind of trust that lets students open up, take on hard material like DNA structure, and use the Engineering Design Process to feel safe making mistakes along the way. See how this Afterschool program is teaching the whole child and proving a screen is no barrier to real connection.

Afterschool tends to be measured in two ways: by the hours it covers and by how much homework gets done. Both matter to families for real reasons. Neither one tells you much about the quality of the learning happening inside those hours.