What’s Right With Our Schools: Tennessee Aquarium STREAM Center

“The STREAM learning center supported by UNUM, um is a brand new space for learning opportunities. From our in-reaches, which is like our on-site activities for field trips, but also for our summer and other seasonal camps. We made it with a lot of intention and passion. Um, so we wanted to highlight what stream stands for, which is Science, Technology, Research (which we added), Engineering, Art, and Math; kind of a play on STEAM um, in schools. And so we wanted to make sure to highlight all these things that we use every single day for animal care, for our conservation research, and for our education,” Stephanie Soto, Formal Learning Experiences Coordinator, The Tennessee Aquarium, said.

“We have two Sensory friendly rooms that are in the STREAM Learning Center. Again, this was supported by UNUM. And so when you step inside, you can see that this is a quiet space for kids who may need to just have a little bit of a moment by themselves,” Alison Pryor, Media Coordinator, Tennessee Aquarium, said.

“So in this space, this is for anyone that books a program in terms of in-reach. So on-site field trips when you come on in,” Soto says.

“So we do have virtual learning, right? Um it’s very exciting. We’ve in other years have done um virtual in Kentucky as well as Ohio. So I’m hoping to expand this year in 2026,” Soto said.

Soto continues, “So the virtual program it can be a lot of different things. We work with you and your needs too. So, if you’re saying that, you know, we need we want to talk to someone that has experience um handling animals or we want to talk about like invasive species versus natives, we can have someone here do that. So, I think what the stream learning center provides is a lot of times when you think of an aquarium in a zoo, first thing that comes to mind is usually not education programming. Um so this is right front and center in the plaza to show you that yes we are going to help you um facilitate learning in any way. Um so we help with that to try to make the learning try to do everything hands-on um and to build an experience at in the moment so they remember it uh longer. So to book any outreach virtual or in person you can go to the Tennessee Aquarium website tnqua.org, and there’s the educate tab at the top. And there’s a form to fill out with all the specifics we need from you to make sure we cater this experience to what you and your classroom need.”