INNOVATION THROUGH PARTNERSHIP
Partnerships and Collaborators
Acera is a lab school—a place where education is designed, tested, and refined in real time. We invent and pilot curricula and collaborate with leaders in education and STEM to inspire students and advance innovative teaching practices. Our partners and collaborators have included Tufts CEEO, Scratch Foundation, Lieberman Labs, Arduino, LEGO Education, MIT Media Lab, One Brave Idea, and many more. Since our founding, the school has been innovating, capturing new ideas, sharing these ideas beyond our walls. Acera students and educators are never passive recipients; they are innovators and help change the field of education.
This year’s highlights:
- Tufts Center for Engineering Education Outreach (Tufts CEEO): At Acera, we have been working with students from the Tufts Center for Engineering Education and Outreach (CEEO) across our programming. Graduate students from Tufts CEEO have been co-developing centers and programs with Acera faculty around engineering, design and robotics. Additionally, Tufts CEEO students have been conducting educational research with Acera students (with appropriate permissions from families of course!). This collaboration helped us bring in leaders from the CEEO to provide professional learning for our faculty this spring!
- Arduino: Acera was featured in Arduino’s 20th anniversary campaign for piloting robotics curriculum with younger students. Our feedback helps shape their tools, and we get early access to new technology. This pilot has helped create new curriculum, and also provided us with many free robots to continue to innovate with!
- Scratch Foundation: Acera students are co-designing the next version of Scratch, collaborating in workshops led by Design Director Tif Gagnon. Their insights help improve a platform used by 8 million kids worldwide.
- LEGO Education came at the start of the year to pilot test a new STEM curriculum they are working on. Our students and teachers gave them feedback, and this product was refined and now is being shared worldwide. Our students loved meeting with leaders from LEGO Education, and had a lot of great insights to share!
- MindHive Lab (NYU): Teacher Alexis Hibbler piloted and refined their civic science curriculum at Acera, then helped train and design lessons with public school educators in Boston and NYC.