SAE Foundation: Young engineers in action
It is always so encouraging to meet the children and young people being impacted by our charity partners’ work and resources. This week, Foundation Director, Sarah Smith, had the privilege of participating in lessons at 186th Street Elementary School in LA where teachers are making excellent use of our charity partner SAE Foundation’s AWIM (“A World in Motion”) program.
Focusing on the JetToy module, fourth and fifth graders showcased their brilliant balloon-powered toy cars, and were learning how to improve their models through continued tweaking whenever the cars went off course!
The children work in teams of four, dividing roles into: Project Engineer, Consulting Engineer, Test Engineer and Facilities Engineer. Together they form a company, design a brand and then design a model taking into account how fast and how far they want it to go, and how much weight they want it to carry.
The program has two main objectives: to offer students engaging, high-quality STEM programming that sparks their interest in these subjects, and to provide teachers with training that enhances their confidence in teaching STEM topics.
The school have had a relationship with the SAE Foundation for over 20 years and continue to receive resource packs each year to build the JetToys.
It was great to see fifth graders supporting the fourth graders with the testing of their models and providing advice based on their own experience.
One 10-year-old fifth grader said, “It was a good experience. We got to do engineering and we learnt from our mistakes. Just because you get something wrong, doesn’t mean you can’t fix it.” She said her future goal is to become an astronaut engineer at NASA.
Huge thanks to SAE Foundation and the inspiring teachers at 186th Street Elementary School for all your fantastic work in introducing the topic of engineering to children in such a fun and engaging way!