Our NEW NAPLES LOCATION is almost here!
Naples STEAM Families,
At long last, we have a very exciting announcement many years in the making. Full STEAM Ahead Naples is moving into our FOREVER home! We have secured a dedicated 3,000sq ft space very conveniently located between Mason Classical Academy (North Campus) and Montessori Academy of Naples. We are in the process of building this space out specifically for what we do best, and we absolutely can not wait to share it with you all. We are hopeful to be moved into this space by Jan 2024.
The new home of Full STEAM Ahead is located at 2659 Professional Cir. Suite 1108, Naples, FL 34119. This new location is less than a mile from our current home, so we will not miss a beat with afterschool pickups, Mini Camps, and Summer Camps. St. Monica’s has graciously allowed us to stay on with them until we make the move.
To the parents who have continually trusted us and supported us by placing your students in our care in spite of our less than ideal facilities, we thank you from the bottom of our hearts. Your continued support and loyalty has allowed us to build out a new space worthy of you; our wonderful students, families, teachers, and programs. This dedicated space is ours for at least 10 years, and we are VERY excited to be able to spread our wings once again.
Interested in our journey to this point? Read on below!
Our journey to organizational independence has been anything but linear.
We (Hilary and Ryan Shore) got the idea for Full STEAM Ahead in 2014. We ran a test camp during the summer of 2014 at Steinway Piano Gallery, and by January of 2015, we were putting in our resignation with Collier County Public Schools to commit fully to our new adventure. During that same January, our first son was also born. This made the first year of Full STEAM Ahead both rewarding but incredibly challenging both personally and professionally. Just as we do today, we relied heavily on your support and faith in us to carry us through. Our first partnerships were with Sports Club during the 2015-16 school year and St. John the Evangelist for the summer of 2015 and 2016. We quickly outgrew Sports Club, but found much more space and a terrific partnership in St John’s where we could expand our offerings and spread our wings. By the summer of 2016, our second son was well on his way, and our programs were rocking and rolling at St John’s.
Unfortunately, in September 2017, Hurricane Irma graced us with her presence and did significant damage to the church roof. Because of this, St. John’s needed to reclaim our space, so we were forced once again to find a new home in short order. This time we did with Montessori Academy of Naples, inside of the old Hodges University Building. This was our first real taste of freedom, and we were able to build out a semi-custom space and further expand our class offerings. By now, we had brought on 3 more full time teachers and were offering classes in numerous locations around Naples. With an outstanding leadership team that included Dr. Daman Essert, we were able to grow and solidify our footing over the next 2 years, and expand to our 2nd location, this time in Ft Myers. Everything was going great!
We were set to open our doors in Ft Myers for our Grand Opening on March 17th, 2020. This date may sound vaguely familiar, because it was around the time when the world froze and time stood still due to the global pandemic. Around this same time, our space at Montessori Academy of Naples came under scrutiny due to the sale of the building we were in to an outside organization. To help facilitate the sale, we were once again squeezed out as low man on the totem pole. With the pandemic looming large in July of 2020, we decided not to seek a new location for Naples for the 2020-21 school year.
Summer of 2021 had us searching in desperation for a place to run our camps in a pandemic shaded world. Churches and schools that had previously been happy to welcome us in previously were no longer accepting outside guests due to Covid scares. Finally, we found a partner in Whiz Kids on Pine Ridge Rd. The space was far less than ideal for what we do, and it was a monumental challenge to share with their operations, but we managed to effectively run camps that summer regardless. As that summer started winding down, we finally found a church that would be willing to welcome us in to run our after school programs and summer camps.
Enter St Monica’s. St. Monica’s and the leadership there welcomed us in with open arms at a time when nobody else would, and we are forever grateful for the opportunity there. However, as many parents have noticed, we outgrew St. Monica’s parish hall quickly, and the challenges with being a pop-up program sharing space once again have kept us from reaching our potential.
For those playing along at home, here’s our wild ride summarized:
2014 Steinway Piano Gallery → 2015 St. John the Evangelist → 2015-16 Sports Club → 2016 St. John the Evangelist → 2017 Hurricane Irma → 2018 Hodges University/Montessori Academy of Naples → 2020 Pandemic → 2021 Whiz Kids → 2021 St. Monica’s → 2022 Hurricane Ian → 2024 Full STEAM Ahead Naples @ Professional Cir.
Now, finally, after 8 years of searching, we have found our forever home. Our new facility features 2,929 sq ft of fully dedicated STEAM space custom built to our specs. Our state of the art facility will have 5 classrooms, tons of storage for projects, all the latest tech, and will feel like a completely different learning environment much more suited to our goals at Full STEAM Ahead. We are also very excited about our new neighbors: Mason Classical Academy North Campus and Montessori Academy of Naples are both within earshot, and we look forward to (re)establishing relationships with other academic institutions.
Our new home is the result of 8 years of patience and hard work in the face of once in a lifetime disasters and pandemics, and being always being the little guy in a sea of well-funded and well-connected organizations. We are over the moon excited to share it with you all, and give your children the learning environment they have deserved this whole time. For those of you who supported us through all of these changes, we thank you from the bottom of our hearts. We literally could not have done it without you, and we hope that you stay with us for many more years as we continue to build a truly unique learning environment in which your children can flourish.
All the best,
Ryan and Hilary Shore
Full STEAM Ahead
Of learning