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.

EiE aims to create the next generation of problem solvers. To achieve this we know our engineering curricula needs to engage ALL students. When our founder Christine Cunningham started the EiE project, she realized she had an incredible opportunity to introduce a new discipline to students without worrying about previous experiences, entrenched models of learning, or biases against the subject. She began this process in earnest by reviewing literature on elementary school STEM education and talking to educators and engineers about what elementary engineering could look like. From this research, Cunningham and the EiE research team identified the fourteen inclusive design principles that we still use today to develop our curricula.

The Engineering is Elementary team is dedicated to making our engineering curricula accessible to all students, including English Learners—the fastest growing group of public school students in the United States. And because 77% of English Learners speak Spanish at home, we are fully committed to supporting educators in their instruction of Spanish-speaking students. Today, the EiE team is happy to announce two exciting project updates that support our mission to bring engineering education to all learners.

The Engineering is Elementary team is committed to making our engineering curricula accessible to all students, including English Learners—the fastest growing group of public school students in the United States. We already have Spanish-translated student-facing materials available for our 20 in-school curriculum units, and you'll notice an exciting addition if you check out our two out-of-school time curricula. You can now download Spanish translations of the student notebooks for all 20 Engineering Adventures and Engineering Everywhere units!

One of the EiE staff’s favorite classroom engineering moments from our video entry to the NSF 2016 Video Showcase is when young engineer Max says to his classmate Charley, “Before this, I didn’t know Charley was a genius about this topic!” Charley responds, “I didn’t know I could even say that much or learn that much,” to the well-deserved compliment. This vignette perfectly illustrates one of the engineering habits of mind we hope all EiE learners develop: to see themselves as engineers and as problem solvers. In addition to engaging students like Charley and Max in engineering activities, we’ve learned that exposing them to positive role models they can identify with can also help accomplish this goal. So, in honor of Women’s History Month, we hope you’ll share these role models to inspire your own “genius” moments.