February 24th and 25th marked the 5th year that PMSP, Intel, and Hillsboro School District celebrated National Engineers Week by bringing together Intel volunteers with 4th-grade classrooms to coach students on a hands-on, engineering design project that is standards (NGSS) aligned, relevant to the real-world, and student-directed.
While last year’s visits were entirely virtual, this year students stood, sat, and crouched next to each other in-person to collaborate on their engineering design challenge: a Lunar Lander that keeps a passenger safe when dropped from 6 feet in the air. Intel provided all materials required to complete the challenge to every participating classroom. Intel volunteers joined the classroom via Google Meet and coached student groups by asking encouraging questions, while sharing their own real-world experiences with engineering projects, working in teams, learning from failure, and exploring new ideas.
“I loved that the teachers and the volunteers made it so student driven by asking questions rather than instructing. This made all students feel validated and heard, and it really made them all think outside the box, not only to design the product, but to also test and redesign it.
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These Career Connected Learning visits provided an opportunity for students to see themselves capable of STEM work and important contributors to tough problems. These experiences can be transformative for young learners. Research shows that race and gender often predict students’ opportunities to learn, with the outcome being underrepresented minority youth having few career-connected experiences. But the interest and time that these volunteers dedicated to cultivating student thought, as well as the ways they connected classroom design challenges to real life workplace experiences, sparked 1,500 Hillsboro District students to view themselves as capable STEM learners.
Lunar Lander Drawing
Lunar Lander Model
“One child in my class has been withdrawn this year and often very reserved and disengaged, however he came alive during this project! He was talking, sharing and creating with others! It was so great to see! I spoke with his mom to share how excited he got and she said this is all he is talking about. He said, “Mom, I am going to be an engineer!.” This is amazing from this student who struggles academically and socially.”
Intel Volunteers Zooming In
For more information, please see this Hillsboro News Times article and this KGW8 news video.
