Winners Selected to Receive $2.4 Million to Improve Early Childhood STEM Ed

• By Sri Ravipati
• 01/26/17

100Kin10, a national network that aims to train and retain 100,000 K–12 STEM teachers by 2021, Wednesday announced 10 recipients to receive more than $2.4 million in total funding for their “moonshot” ideas to improve early childhood STEM education.

100Kin10 launched the Early Childhood STEM Learning Challenge last summer. The network asked its participating partners (comprising more than 200 academic institutions, nonprofits, companies and government agencies) to help solve the following challenge: “How might we support teachers to create active STEM learning environments in grades pre-K to 3 across the country?”

According to 100Kin10, “active learning” engages students in thinking, questioning and problem-solving real-world issues. The grants help support innovative solutions from current 100Kin10 partners that prepare and support teachers to creative active STEM learning. The goal is to “encourage experimentation” and design “great solutions to the root causes of their overarching challenge,” according to the original program announcement.

The 10 winning projects include:

• The Smithsonian Air and Space Museum and the DC Office of State Superintendent of Education, which will offer professional development opportunities to nearby early childhood educators;
• The New York Hall of Science and Bank Street College of Education, which will lead a professional development program to help kindergarten and first grade teachers in Queens, NY implement active STEM learning into lessons;
• The American Museum of Natural History in New York, which will offer a professional development program for teachers in low-income communities in New York City to design and bring hands-on learning opportunities to the museum’s students;
• A project at Loyola Marymount University, in partnership with the California Science Center and Auburn University, to create a curriculum kit for kindergarten teachers that uses design-thinking to tackle real-world problems
• The University of Northern Colorado and Colorado School of Mines' TEAM-UP program, which will partner up aspiring teachers with elementary teachers to design and deliver STEM lessons to kindergarten to third grade classrooms;
• The New York Botanical Garden, which is working on developing a mobile science app for teachers and parents that encourages scientific exploration in the Botanical Gardens;
• The University Of New Hampshire, which developed an online professional development program for pre-K to third grade math teachers throughout the state;
• The Silicon Valley STEM nonprofit Ignited, which will expand its summer fellowship for third grade teachers;
• Another STEM nonprofit STEMteachersNYC, which offers a year-long program from for kindergarten to third grade teachers; and
• The City University of New York, NYC Men Teach, the Lawrence Hall of Science and ExpandED Schools, which have partnered to launch a program for pre-service and second grade teachers in NYC.

Further information is available on the 100Kin10 site.