Ms. Donna LaFlamme
Middle School Science & SMART Team Advisor
Office: 262.783.7565, Ext. 263
Ms. LaFlamme, the oldest of five girls, was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, but grew up in Maine, where she attended St. Joseph Catholic School and then Lewiston High School. Her junior high teachers, both Sisters of Mercy, inspired a lifelong interest in mathematics and science, introducing her to ancient number systems, the binary system used by digital computers, and to viruses existing on the border between living and non-living. After high school, she attended Barnard College of Columbia University where she majored in mathematics and minored in chemistry. Following graduation, she used her math degree to get a position at the Bank of Tokyo in the New York City financial district. Banking did not intrigue her. However, she received a fellowship in bio-engineering at Columbia University School of Engineering, where she explored sustained release of drugs from polysaccharide gel carriers. Using C-14 labeled drugs was exciting, but collecting radioactive rabbit urine to analyze, not so much. Ms. LaFlamme soon realized that working alone in the lab all day was not a career she wished to pursue, so she began taking education classes at Teachers College to teach math and science.
Ms. LaFlamme moved to Wisconsin in 1982 where she attended a UW-Milwaukee post-baccalaureate program to obtain teaching certifications in mathematics, chemistry, biology, and broad field science. She taught high school mathematics for seven years at St Joan Antida High School, where she became department chair and received a General Electric Teacher Grant. She started teaching middle school science at St. Dominic Catholic School in 1989 and never left, because the students are enthusiastic learners and the parents are positively involved in making St. Dominic a caring community of learners.
Ms. LaFlamme believes that middle school is the window of opportunity for engaging student's interest in science and math. She loves the high energy of middle school students, whose curiosity about how the world works is inspiring, as is their love of experiments! She particularly enjoys planning experiments that generate data that can be analyzed using TI83/84 graphing calculators in order to help students experience the power of math in science.
Ms. LaFlamme is a life-long learner and never misses taking a summer class to enrich her knowledge of science, mathematics and teaching. In addition, as the teacher-adviser to the 8th grade SMART Team, she has the opportunity every year to learn with her students about a new protein, as the team of students is partnered with a local scientist. She helps her students design a physical model of the protein for their scientist using the 3D-printing technology at the Center for Bio-Molecular Modeling (Milwaukee School of Engineering), the sponsor of the SMART Team Program.
Having grown up in Maine, Ms. LaFlamme is a lover of snow skiing and has taught skiing since high school. Her husband, Gary, is a mechanical engineer, who was required to learn to ski before they were married in 1985 at St. Matthias Parish. In return, Ms. LaFlamme has learned to ride mechanized toys through the woods of northern Wisconsin.