IEEE Women in Engineering Magazine - June 2008 - 42

PHOTO COURTESY OF THE MUSEUM OF SCIENCE, BOSTON

established in 2004 to introduce engineering as a new discipline in the K-12 curriculum nationwide
and to make it engaging; Spicer came
aboard at the beginning of 2006. Today,
her office is filled with engineering magazines and books, including a series of elementary school storybooks designed to
help teachers create lesson plans that
connect engineering with the more commonly taught subject areas. "They're
showing kids how engineering connects
to math and science, and in some cases
social studies and world geography. The
storybooks are about children all around
the world, so there's also the whole
notion of diversity, all rolled up into literature," says Spicer.
In Mariana Becomes a Butterfly, for
instance, a young girl in the Dominican Republic works with her aunt, an
agricultural engineer, to save her

hand pollinator, a tool
that can be used to catalyze
plant reproduction in the absence of
natural pollinators.
In Leif Catches the Wind, two
cousins, with the help of Leif's mother,
a mechanical engineer in Denmark,
save a pond of fish by designing a windmill. Students are then encouraged to
make their own hand pollinators and
windmills using simple items like baking soda, pipe cleaners, string, and
milk cartons.
The result is a series of books that
Spicer believes not only funnel kids'
curiosity into hands-on projects and show
them how to engineer solutions to realworld problems but also "eliminate fear in
teachers. Just as easily as teachers know
ABCs and are comfortable and confident
going to do compound words, they're
going to be comfortable with this."

Second grade students at the
Barbieri School, in
Framingham, MA, participate
in an Engineering is
Elementary lesson.

Engaging students is one way
to change the perception of
engineering and technical
education from K-12,
according to Yvonne Spicer.

IEEE WOMEN IN ENGINEERING MAGAZINE

SUMMER 2008

Reaching All Children
In Spicer's view, the strength of NCTL
initiatives like "Engineering is elementary" and "Engineering the future," a
program designed for high school students, is that the center didn't just
guess at how to put the initiatives
together. Scientists, engineers, mathematicians, and former school teachers
all help to create the lesson plans,
books, and other resource materials
that are then tested and modified
according to teacher feedback.
"We have tried to design everything we
do to reach all children, not just the kids
that are the best and brightest," Spicer
says. "We feel all children need to be technologically literate-to have awareness, to
be able to use the tools that they've
learned, be able to think critically, problem-solve." She is proud of the work, and
she clearly loves the power and potential
engineering holds, in the way that only
someone who has spent a lifetime teaching others to love it-or at least appreciate it-can.
A passionate teacher, Spicer knows,
can have a profound effect. She remembers her fourth grade teacher telling her
she was smart, and her first black teacher,
PHOTO COURTESY OF THE MUSEUM OF SCIENCE, BOSTON

All children
need to be
technologically
Hawaiian berry
Storybooks About
literate-to
have
plant. She learns
Engineering
about natural
Spicer is in her
awareness, use the tools
systems, insects,
40s, energetic, and
that they've learned, be
and the pollinaexpressive, well
able to think critically
tion process and
suited to her role as
and problemthen applies that
cheerleader for the
solve.
knowledge to create a
NCTL. The center was

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Women in Engineering Magazine - June 2008