Episode Overview
What if your next school STEM excursion involved New York, Washington, Disney and Kennedy Space Center?
In Episode 99 of the Bridge Building Podcast, Stephen Anderson speaks with Shaun Lane from Hale School in Perth about an extraordinary international STEM experience his Technology department has developed for students.
Every two years, the school takes a group of students to the United States for a bespoke STEM tour. The 2026 trip will see 32 students and four staff travel through New York, Washington, Orlando and Titusville over two weeks.
Along the way, students explore aviation and space museums, the Smithsonian institutions, STEM programs at Disney and Universal, universities and, finally, Kennedy Space Center, where they undertake an immersive international program including astronaut training and simulated space missions.
Shaun also shares some unforgettable moments from previous tours — including arriving in Orlando alongside a hurricane and, through some extraordinary timing, witnessing a SpaceX rocket launch and the boosters returning to Earth.
But this episode isn’t simply about an incredible school trip.
Shaun explains how Hale moved away from an organised tour and began designing its own program. The teachers develop the itinerary themselves and then work with a travel company to manage flights, accommodation and other logistics.
The conversation explores costs, free and low-cost STEM opportunities, working with universities, accessing educational programs at major attractions and how schools could build a smaller or less expensive version of the experience.
For teachers who have ever wondered whether an ambitious international STEM experience is actually possible, this episode might have you asking a different question:
Why couldn’t we do it?
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About the Bridge Building Podcast
“This is the place where we dissect and then discover the many ways ITD teachers all over this country are using their passion to create passionate students. We talk of measuring and manipulating a multitude of materials of design and divergent thought, of creation with our minds and with our hands. And most of all, we talk of growing great young people because of course that is what we do.”
So what does that mean other than I like to show off my alliteration skills? Since coming back to teaching a few years ago the thing that strikes me most, and frankly scared me most is how lonely this job is. How little we know about what is happening in our subject area. The classroom next door, a class in the next school, let alone the next town are a mystery to me. I know there are teachers out there doing incredible things and this (the podcast) is a way for me to find out and be inspired. I would like to invite you along to listen and learn, to be inspired by some of the sensational teachers I speak to on the “Bridge Building Podcast – from technology to the trades”
About the Podcast Host
Stephen Anderson is a Design Technology, Trade Training and accidental Science teacher at a small high school 2 hours North West of Brisbane.
Over To You
If you know someone who is doing something spectacular or just great fun in design and tech or in trade training, I would love to know about them.
Contact me through my email osaerial@gmail.com
Music by:
Viola Pink