Lexington Volunteer Opportunities

For all opportunities, please contact:
Amanda Gruhl
617-253-1053
MIT Edgerton Center
77 Massachusetts Avenue, Room 4-405
Cambridge, MA 02139

Lexington Elementary Schools and Boston Museum of Science (Engineering is Elementary) Project

Lexington Public Schools, Mind and Hand Alliance, and the MIT Alumni Association supported a new engineering curriculum in the third grade in the 2008-2009 school year, and will continue support for the 2009-2010 school year. This elementary school curriculum is from the NSF-supported Museum of Science “Engineering is Elementary” (EiE) program. Students read a story about a child in another country and then work on the same engineering problem described in the story using hands-on activities for the classroom.

Last year, following an EiE intro session in December with the Lexington elementary school teachers, half of the third grade teachers signed up to pilot this curriculum in the spring. The teachers’ high interest was in part stirred by the information that local MIT volunteers would be invited to assist them in piloting this activity! MIT alumni volunteers and the third grade teachers were introduced to the curriculum in a 2 hour, Museum of Science training session on Feb 26th in Lexington. We matched volunteers to teachers, and the alumni helped with the EiE curriculum in classrooms for 2-3 days during the spring semester.

We feel this has been a very positive and successful pilot, and all third grade teachers will use the EiE curriculum in their classrooms this 2009-2010 school year, with the help of MIT alumni! For more information about the curriculum, visit the Museum of Science EiE website. If you are interested in participating in the program this year, stay tuned for further details!