Partnership opportunities
Our funding partners appreciate how important engineering is to the quality of the lives we are able to lead. They know that the innovation and creativity support advances in engineering and technology and that dedicated, knowledgeable teachers are the foundation of a strong technical education. With over 132,000 schools in the country, that means we need lots more teachers with the training and confidence to make engineering part of all K-12 students’ learning.
If your organization wants to support our efforts to train K-12 teachers in how to make engineering part of their classroom activities, please be in touch. We can work with organizations of all sizes to reach teachers in their own networks or to identify other groups of teachers who might be good candidates for training in engineering.
The Engineers On Deck approach
Our teacher training program is designed to meet the individual needs of particular schools or districts.
We work first to understand their local circumstances and existing capabilities in developing a training activity that helps them meet their goals.
We customize the subject matter of training sessions to align with schools’ own areas of interest or emphasis.
We offer hands-on training, with lessons easily reproduced at participants’ home institutions, cross-disciplinary in approach, and based on real-world problem-solving exercises.
We include engineering design as an integral feature of training, using it as a way to connect technical knowledge with critical skills like analysis, teamwork, and communication.
We provide training at a time and location convenient to participants.
We engage with teachers before and after training events to support both their learning and implementation efforts, helping make engineering in the classroom a collaborative enterprise for participants from a given school or district.
We work with third-party funders to make training affordable or, in some instances, even free for participants.
Benefits
Our training workshops enable teachers in STEM fields with little or no background in engineering to present the field as relevant, engaging, and open to all their students. Teachers learn the basics of engineering design and how to integrate it into teaching content from other STEM fields. And they gain immediately usable knowledge and tools to make engineering a substantive feature of their students’ learning. Increased awareness and comfort with engineering as a general practice and possible course of study are vital, first steps in the STEM workforce development strategies we need to be pursuing as a country.