ACM EDUCATION

By Nora Flemming de Sandoval, ACM Education

Education Pivots to Virtual Programming

Before March 2020, the LeMay – America’s Car Museum Education Program delivered a robust array of field trip offerings serving well over 9,000 students each year. Naturally, once social distancing, quarantine and stay-home orders became part of the daily vernacular, it became clear that we would need to make some significant changes to our programming to continue engaging with students. Recognizing that teachers and school districts, already overwhelmed with the demands and cost of ensuring that all students had access to technology and hands-on learning, guided our initial focus. Utilizing grant funding from Tacoma Creates and the Boeing Foundation, the education team of Rebecca Bresler, Kelsey Cross and Nora Flemming de Sandoval began developing models of providing STEM activities to students in their own homes. We focused on a two-fold approach: an on-demand video program with activities and stories for students and families to independently engage with, as well as a virtual, classroom-based curriculum that includes comprehensive activity kits and multiple synchronous lessons. In October 2020, we launched our twice-monthly readaloud program called Stories for Little Spark Plugs and began uploading these videos to YouTube to share with the community. Each video includes a STEM-focused picture book read aloud accompanied by engaging visuals. Several of these stories include accompanying activity suggestions as well. For the classroom project, we adapted our existing field trip workshops into three extended units that would provide consistency and greater depth of inquiry throughout an entire school year. These units include Design, in which students learn principles of design and product development while creating their own car design; Energy, in which students learn about alternate forms of propulsion, produce their own biofuel and experiment with a wind-powered car they develop; and Physics, in which students learn about gravity, momentum and their effects on crash test cars.

We have partnered with Blix Elementary in the Tacoma School District and are working with students in seven 3rd-5th grade classrooms. Blix Elementary has a high proportion of Spanishspeaking students in attendance and many classes are dual language, meaning instruction is provided in both Spanish and English. To accommodate these language needs, the education team translated many of the materials into Spanish. This spring, we will continue to add to our virtual educational options with on-demand videos using readily available household supplies to create and test various biofuels, plastics and alternative energies. We will also begin providing a more traditional field trip experience with single workshop options and live virtual tours to classrooms. Additionally, we are excited to partner with Tacoma Public Library to engage virtually with families, providing our activity kits through their distribution networks and leading an hour-long online STEM lesson and story. This year has been one of challenge, growth and out-of-the-box thinking for the education department as we strive to provide access to our top-notch programming in entirely new ways.