WALTHAM -- "JESUS is like a computer," explains a series of posters in the computer lab of Our Lady's Academy in Waltham. "He ENTERs your life, SCANs your problems, EDITs your tension, SHIFTs your burden, INSERTs happiness, CTRLs your anxiety, ENDs your sorrow, ESCAPEs you from danger, DOWNLOADs solutions, SAVEs you always . . . And brings you HOME."

Under the solemn gaze of Jesus in one of the posters, seventh graders were hard at work, programming LEGO robots to dance to music. Computer lab students are also creating their own video games and learning about artificial intelligence.

"My focus on teaching is to teach them to understand the basic concept of computer science, which is very important and essential for the AI, for machine learning," coding instructor Yang Yang Lin told The Pilot.

Computer lab teacher Alejandro Montes de Oca teaches students digital citizenship.

"My focus is to make sure that students understand how to use the computers in the classroom and any computer in general," he told The Pilot. "How to interact online, how to use the internet, how any of this works. Very important for them to succeed later in life."

Our Lady's Academy serves 400 students from pre-K to eighth grade, and they learn STEM every step of the way. Montes de Oca and Lin are two of four STEM teachers at the school, which also has an additional science teacher. The preschoolers are planting hydroponic gardens and making papier-mache volcanoes, which they will erupt using baking soda and vinegar (the volcanoes also have a social-emotional learning component, teaching the preschoolers that their emotions can be volcanic).

"We've had a rigorous STEM program for the past six years," Our Lady's Academy Principal Chandra Minor told The Pilot. "We have to prepare our children for that world outside. And as you can see, technology is a major part of our world now, of our economy, and of the lives of these children."

Emma was one of the seventh graders making robots dance.

"We have a program, and when we do it, we know what it does and how it connects and how it moves," she told The Pilot.

Emma has attended Our Lady's Academy since second grade, and since then, has learned everything from how to send an email to how to make her own website. Her cousin, a kindergartener, is already learning engineering. He and his classmates are using scraps to build ideas they have for useful inventions. Recently, kindergarteners drew snowmen on graph paper before sculpting them, teaching them how to bring an idea into the third dimension.

"They recognize a need, and then they do it," Minor said. "They have to think about something, and they have to draw something."

In STEM teacher Isabella Calcagni's class, fourth graders make boats out of tin foil, put them in water, and fill them with glass beads to see if they can carry their "cargo" without sinking. Calcagni noticed that her students were curious about why massive ships float, and this is a hands-on way for them to learn about the engineering that goes into it. The fourth graders refine their designs with new sketches and builds, so that their boats can hold more and more weight.

Calcagni previously taught at a Catholic school in Connecticut before coming to Our Lady's Academy. She told The Pilot that she was amazed to step inside a Catholic school with 3D printers.

"I think they have a very good emphasis on science and technology," she said. "It's an incredible emphasis and I really am happy to see it."