Why read this article

• Meet a former YES student whose future was shaped by an early engineering experience
• For educators: See what kinds of STEM experiences help build a child’s identity as a problem-solver
• Download free STEM Career classroom activities and STEM identity fact sheet

As a water resources engineer, Julia Kelly spends her days thinking about where water is going. “The whole system of water, people's relationship with water and how they affect each other is fascinating,” she says. But long before she was called upon to predict the flow of stormwater or help plan infrastructure and protect coastlines, Julia was thinking about a water filter design for a plastic frog in her fourth-grade classroom in Fall River, Massachusetts.

In fact, we still have the footage.

Companies and foundations invest millions of dollars in STEM education each year, delivering technology, curriculum, and other resources into schools. But getting resources through the school doors is only the first step. How can donors make sure their investments translate into meaningful learning for students—not just in the short term, but for years to come?

Do you remember being a kid on the first day of a new school year? Wearing new clothes, carrying fresh spiral notebooks, finding your seat with a mix of excitement and worries. What are the rules? Will other kids talk to me? What if the work in this class is too hard? What is this year going to be like?

As teachers, we try to ease those worries. We introduce the rules and routines on the first day, but a classroom culture takes more time. Before we can really teach content, we first need to create a classroom where students feel safe asking questions, working together, and learning from mistakes. 

Many educators like to start the year with hands-on STEM. A YES engineering challenge is a shared experience that helps set the tone and establish how this class will work together.  As students learn the Engineering Design Process, they also learn expectations and classroom norms, begin to see themselves as capable problem solvers, and give teachers valuable insight into how their new students think and behave.

[This post is part of our series, Engineering Practices in the Classroom. See prior posts: Intro, Engineering Design Process, Exploring Materials, Problems in Context, Balancing Criteria and Constraints]

“Introducing... the slipper of the century!” a seventh grader gestures towards his teammate, who starts walking down the middle of the classroom wearing one bright red slipper with a neon-yellow strap made from scrap fabric.

The student announcer continues, “We made the Stupendous Street Slipper using recycled cellulose as a base for our outsole…”

[This post is part of our series, Engineering Practices in the Classroom, which explores what engineering practices are, why they matter, and what they look like in real classrooms. Today, we’re focusing on the valuable practice of weighing criteria vs constraints when solving a problem.]

Three middle school students are huddled at their table, deep in thought.

“We’re at $7.75,” one student says. “So that’s under $9.00.” They all look at each other.

The medicine cooler they are designing has a maximum budget of $9.00, so there's room if they want to spend a little more to improve the design. After some discussion, they decide to add aluminum foil to the outside of the box for an extra layer of insulation.