Falls Church High School getting an ‘innovation lab’

Falls Church High School will be getting a “state-of-the-art innovation lab.”
Construction will start after the end of the school year and should be completed by the time students return in September, said Principal Michael Yohe. 

The lab will be in a large classroom area that had in the past been used for home economics, Yohe says. The walls and wiring will be replaced, and new equipment will be installed, including 3D printers, a laser cutter, and LCD projectors. 

The lab will support project and inquiry-based learning, collaboration, and cross-disciplinary learning with a bias for design thinking, he says. Teachers in STEM fields (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) will bring their classes to the lab on a rotating basis.

School board members Patty Reed (Providence) and Sandy Evans (Mason) had been working on the lab as one way to improve facilities at FCHS until the school can be renovated, which isn’t expected to happen for several years. The $200,000 project will be funded from proffer money from a development in the Providence District.

The inability to move FCHS up on Fairfax County Public Schools’ renovation queue has been “one of my greatest frustrations,” Evans says. “In the meantime, we’re doing what we can.” There have been piecemeal improvements in the science labs, bathrooms, and auditorium.