What do a gummy bear, a cipher wheel, and a NASA mathematician have in common? For ten students at a children’s home in South Korea, they added up to one unforgettable afternoon.
This past May, KKOOM hosted its latest STEAM and English workshop, built around the book Counting on Katherine. It tells the true story of Katherine Johnson, the NASA mathematician whose calculations helped bring Apollo 13 safely home.
Ten volunteers joined KKOOM Executive Director Leah for the event. Some lived nearby, while others traveled several hours across the country to spend the afternoon reading, playing, and building alongside students ranging from elementary to high school.
A Full Afternoon of Learning and Fun
The day launched with a high-energy warm-up game to get everyone moving and laughing. With the ice broken, students settled in for a bilingual reading of Counting on Katherine in English and Korean, hunting for key vocabulary words as the story unfolded.
Katherine’s story is, at its heart, a story about perseverance and numbers. So what better way to follow the reading than by turning students into code-breakers? The “Secret Messages” session began with What Did You Say, Mr. Robot?, a decoding race game adapted from the free ESL resource Tay’s Teaching Toolkit, in which students raced to translate Mr. Robot’s scrambled messages back into English.
Then came the cipher wheels. After learning how computers store patterns as numbers, each student encoded a secret English word using their own number key, swapped papers with a partner, and worked to crack each other’s codes. The bravest moment came at the end, when students shared their decoded words out loud with the whole class. One of our lesson slides captured the spirit of it all: “Technology means solving problems together.”
A space-themed snack break gave everyone a chance to refuel. Then it was time for the grand finale: the Landing Capsule Challenge. Teams followed the engineering design cycle (design, build, test, try again!) to construct capsules from marshmallows, toothpicks, straws, and paperclips. Their mission? Protect a gummy bear “astronaut” through a series of drop tests, from knee height all the way to a final “Moon to Earth” landing.
Teams that didn’t succeed the first time redesigned and tried again, just like real engineers. Just like Katherine. One volunteer summed up the energy in the room: “When the students tested their rockets, I truly saw them express such excitement and joy!”
The Message Landed
The drop tests weren’t the only thing that landed that day. In their post-workshop reflections, all ten students could explain, in their own words, how Katherine showed perseverance. The book’s core message reached every age level.
“I usually give up easily, but watching Katherine, I gained perseverance.”
– 6th Grade Atudent
That perseverance showed up in the engineering challenge, too. Students walked away proud that their own ideas carried their teams to success, exactly the kind of STEAM confidence the activity was designed to build.
“We dropped the landing capsule using my idea and it landed safely, so I’m proud.”
– 4th Grade Student
“Making and dropping the landing capsule, and I got interested in space.”
– Middle School Student
Beyond STEAM and perseverance, students connected their English learning to bigger dreams, like becoming an English teacher or interpreter and helping others.
“I’ll help foreigners using the English I learned today.”
– 3rd Grade Student
“Through the cooperative games I learned how important teamwork is.”
– High School Student
Volunteers watched the same transformation happen from the other side. “It was amazing seeing the children open up as the day progressed,” one volunteer shared. Another said the workshop struck “the perfect balance of learning and fun.” A 6th grader put it more simply: “It was so perfect I can’t think of anything to improve.”
"I usually give up easily, but watching Katherine, I gained perseverance."
The Learning Continues
True to KKOOM tradition, the learning didn’t end when the workshop did. The day closed with a group photo and a book donation: students received Counting on Katherine along with related titles in Korean and English, including Hidden Figures and books about space and Stephen Hawking. Some of the donated books came from a student club at Seoul Foreign School, whose generosity helped grow the students’ bookshelves even further.
Thank you to our incredible volunteers, the dedicated staff at the children’s home, and the donors who make these English education programs for youth possible. Every student deserves the chance to count on their dreams.
