Recently, EiE team members attended our very own Museum of Science’s Dream Big Educators’ Night. Alongside 200 educators, we watched the Museum’s new IMAX film Dream Big: Engineering Our World, an amazing testament to the ingenuity and resourcefulness of engineers. Dream Big is a great example of how engineering stories that situate STEM learning in a real-world context help students understand the significance of the STEM concepts that they learn in the classroom. We were so inspired by Dream Big that we compiled a list of video resources that feature engineers who are working to achieve the incredible. Visit the Museum to watch Dream Big in person and/or show your students these clips to spark their imagination and get them excited about engineering a bigger and better future!

When you’re getting ready to teach an Engineering is Elementary lesson—or when you’re in the middle of a lesson that extends over more than one class period—you have lots things to organize. 

Patty Whitehouse is the Engineering Lab teacher at Chicago Public Schools' Goudy Technology Academy, which means she does more organizing than most teachers. Every student in the first through fourth grades comes through her lab once a week—almost 400 students total. The school uses two or three different Engineering is Elementary units in each grade, so Patty often preps five different Engineering is Elementary lessons each day! Here’s how she stays organized:  

In September, our founder and director, Christine Cunningham, was invited to participate in “Cracking the Code: The Next Generation of Women in STEM”, hosted by AtlanticLIVE. Alongside other STEM education researchers, corporate leaders, and prolific children’s book author Andrea Beatty, Christine participated in discussions that aimed to answer the question: how do you get more girls and women interested in STEM fields? Christine first noticed the trend of capable women and girls dropping out of STEM fields when her female classmates began disappearing from science classes. She has dedicated her career to battling the misconceptions and stereotypes that keep underrepresented populations out of STEM. Over the course of the day-long event, she shared valuable insights into the lack of female representation in science and engineering that she’s gained over more than a decade at the helm of EiE.

Our team is always looking for more ways to support elementary teachers. We listen closely to teachers, and we hear them express their need for financial support to underwrite the costs of professional development and materials. We are so pleased to have a partner in MathWorks, the Natick-based software company that is funding professional development opportunities for Massachusetts educators for the second year in a row. This year, the EiE/MathWorks scholarship program is bringing engineering to Haverhill Public Schools.

Football season is in full swing and the EiE staff is excited to root for their favorite teams—and to toss around the personalized football that we were happy to receive from our friends at Colorado STEMworks! If the middle schoolers in your afterschool program also have football fever, we have a timely engineering activity for you to implement. Our Engineering Everywhere unit Put a Lid On It: Engineering Safety Helmets introduces youth to the field of biomechanical engineering—a field of engineering that combines mechanical engineering and biology—as they explore the design and construction of helmets. We’ve found that youth are most engaged with engineering when they’re working on problems that connect to their own lives, and Put a Lid On It is the perfect opportunity to engage your kids with compelling real-world connections to football—one of the most popular sports in the United States.