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MITRE Helps Dranesville Elementary Think Outside the Box April 2012
Dranesville Elementary School invited MITRE to its classrooms for a morning of Out of the Box thinking. Employees from MITRE, a not-for-profit systems engineering and information technology company, helped Dranesville Elementary Students expand their critical thinking skills at Out of the Box Day on Thursday, March 22. Giselle Morris said the event was organized to expose children to things they normally wouldn't get to do in the classroom, such as solving problems that may not have concrete answers using their background knowledge in science and math. MITRE proposed the morning of Out of the Box thinking to the school and provided more than 35 volunteers from the company to help assist teachers and parent volunteers for the event. The company also donated supplies and funding. Kindergarten and first-grade students worked to make cardboard cars that could be moved with magnets, second grade students worked on making dog biscuit delivery systems, third grade students created organizational containers to customize their desks and fourth grade students created light sources they could wear. Students in fifth grade created bridges, while sixth grade students made medical supply vehicles, to be used in an egg drop. Barbara Toohill, who serves as a vice president at MITRE, said the company tries to do a lot of outreach in the community with Science, Technology, Engineering and Math education. She said the company's goal is to foster growth of science and technology careers among girls and people of color. Toohill said Dranesville was a good fit to bring the program because it has a supportive and enthusiastic faculty and parents, as well as a diverse student population. At the end of the Out of the Box morning the school gathered on the baseball fields to test the sixth grade students' medical supply vehicles, egg drop style, with help from the Fairfax County Fire and Rescue Department. A ladder truck from Station 36 brought the 24 projects up to a height of 50 feet for their first drop. Ten projects survived. The ladder truck then brought the projects up to a full 100-foot drop, where eight survived. Al Seamon, a MITRE employee, said all their volunteers loved the event and being able to work with children on the projects. He said it was also great to see the studetns work together to problem solve, create teams and even think about marketing their designs. —Courtesy Leslie Perales, Herndon.Patch.com Page last updated: April 24, 2012 | Top of page |
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