It’s National Teacher Appreciation Week! Personally, I‘m sending retrospective appreciation to my mom, a first-grade teacher who made a big difference to lots of kids. Back in the 1960s, 70s, and 80s, Mom taught at a Title I school in Massachusetts . . .  where she was considered a renegade for insisting that science be an important part of the school day. Her students grew seedlings, hatched baby chicks, and engineered a lunar lander from a refrigerator box. 

Matt Johnson likes sports. He used to play baseball, basketball, and football; after college, he took up golf; and today, having just completed a Ph.D. in education at The Pennsylvania State University, he says that sports experience has shaped both his personal philosophy and his dissertation research. “As a serious competitor, failure doesn’t discourage me, it makes me want to improve,” he says. “So why do schools place such a stigma on failure?”

Matt’s research; which he presented yesterday in a special seminar at the Museum of Science, Boston; explores failure in elementary engineering classrooms. His data source is candid classroom videos collected by Engineering is Elementary researchers for our National Science Foundation-funded research project, E4 (“Evaluating the Efficacy of Elementary Engineering.”)

You know how inspiring it is to watch an exemplary teacher engage every student in the classroom. EiE Classroom Videos give you that experience. These concise productions show you a condensed version of each EiE lesson in about 10 minutes. Watch a skilled teacher make connections between science and engineering, deal with challenges on the fly, and deploy effective teaching strategies.

Today we’re thrilled to announce the release of four Classroom Videos for the unit Sounds Like Fun: Seeing Animal Sounds. If you’re teaching this unit, you’ll definitely want to take a peek at these videos.

Earlier this month we announced a landmark: more than 10 million children have engaged in hands-on classroom engineering with EiE! We’re equally excited to mention another landmark: Since 2003, more than 100,000 teachers have taught EiE lessons to their students. To meet the growing demand for EiE professional development (PD), we’re growing a cadre of highly qualified PD providers. These educators learn to facilitate EiE workshops at a special three-day program called the Teacher Educator Institute (TEI).

“Building for You.” That’s the slogan of New York City’s Department of Design and Construction, which builds the civic facilities city dwellers use every day, from cultural institutions to police precincts to roads, sidewalks, and sewer systems. The agency employs hundreds of engineers, and city officials are thinking ahead to the next generation; recently, DDC launched the “Young Engineers” program with the goal of inspiring students to consider careers in the built environment.  At the center of this initiative is a middle-school afterschool program that uses Engineering is Elementary’s “Engineering Everywhere” curriculum.  This short video shows some of the exciting outcomes!