Projects

Supporting and Amplifying Local Organizations Engaged in Playful Engineering-Based Learning (PEBL) Post-COVID is a grant funded by LEGO Foundation awarded to Tufts Center for Engineering Education and Outreach (CEEO), Tufts DevTech Research Group, and Tufts Department of Education to help children recover from the learning disruption caused by the pandemic. With this grant, Tufts CEEO will collaborate with KARMA and other local education organizations whose missions align with playful learning, innovative approaches to learning, and Tufts CEEO’s fundamental belief in empowering teachers and students by allowing them to drive their own learning. Local organizations with established community relationships are essential to bring playful engineering-based learning to students and teachers in the current complicated educational landscape where schools are juggling competing priorities.

Prior work with Tufts CEEO brought online STEAM activities into rural-based classrooms to better understand how Tufts CEEO can support remote local organizations, teachers and students in times of COVID. The PEBL project allows for more teachers to not only be part of the development but replicate to other schools. The model that is developed would also allow CEEO to increase the integration of Navajo priorities, language, beliefs and history into the culturally relevant MakerPlace(s).

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Participating Schools

Both schools have teachers that are true definitions of maverick educators who serves as fellows on the PEBL project. Maverick educators are challenging the norms of education by approaching teaching styles with innovative methods of learning. This allows expansive growth for the students, families, and communities on the Navajo Nation.