You may know that at STARBASE Hanscom AFB we run our five-day school year program in the summer for two to three weeks exclusively for English Language Learners. We do this because many ELL students are willing, able and excited to take on STEM challenges, and, in so doing, they expand their English vocabulary and pragmatic language skills. The students typically come from school districts with relative high ELL populations and which operate summer programs for their ELL students.
During the summer of 2020, many districts did not run summer ELL programs or were simply too harried by viral considerations to partner with STARBASE as usual. Instead, we were fortunate to be able to collaborate with the TAG/ALERTA program at UMass Boston. Tag/ALERTA runs a summer camp for ELL students from the Boston Public Schools, bringing them to a college campus for a taste of the college experience. In 2020, the program was more challenging to produce as it was necessarily online. The STARBASE Hanscom Team, working with the UTeach program from UMass, provided afternoon STEM program within the camp throughout July and into August.
The STARBASE Team wanted to provide a more hands-on, tactile experience than we had in the spring. We did this by creating ‘mystery boxes’ for the students and delivering them to their homes in Boston. The boxes were filled with basic, flexible-use items such as wooden dowels, foam core and various types of connectors. The materials could be used by the students to respond to engineering challenges. The students worked in teams and drafted designs before building prototypes. See one of the designs in progress and how this student built a prototype scale model elevator.
I’d like to send a heartfelt ‘thank you’ to our collaborating teams and to Raytheon for their support of the ELL program at STARBASE Hanscom AFB, each year and for 2020 in particular.