Adopt a School
Introducing Students to the World of Architecture, Construction, and Engineering
by Timothy Wright, national curricula coordinator, National Building Museum
As the twenty kindergarten, first grade, and second grade students walked into the library, I sensed that they were very excited to receive a guest. I was just as excited to be that particular guest on this day and thanked them for filing into the library’s reading nook in such an orderly fashion. The students from Strong John Thomson Elementary were now ready for a reading of Isabel Hill’s Urban Animals, one of my favorite books.
The reading and subsequent donation of Urban Animals—and nineteen more books—to Thomson’s library signaled the beginning of a new Museum initiative called Adopt a School.
Adopt a School allows a sponsor to partner with the National Building Museum on a two year commitment to bring the nation’s best education programs related to the building arts and sciences directly to an individual school. The multi-tiered programming offered is diverse and benefits teachers and their students in grades kindergarten through 9.
The sponsor works with the Museum to select a Washington area Title I elementary, middle, or high school. The Museum does the rest.
The school will visit the Museum five times to complete one of nine on-site school programs. These nationally recognized programs are two hours in length and are led by Museum educators. Round trip transportation from the school to the Museum for all students is included.
Each school will receive five of each of the Museum’s two all-inclusive curriculum kits. These kits are ideal for teachers of grades 5-9. They are designed to be used in the classroom at a pace determined by the teacher. Bridge Basics teaches bridge engineering through engaging and challenging hands-on lesson plans. Green Community incorporates city planning and green building concepts as it guides students in the creation of an entire city, from the ground up. In addition to receiving the actual kits, staff from the Museum will offer a personalized training session on how to best utilize the kit to teachers from each school.
What brought me to Thomson Elementary on this particular day were the library books. Adopt a School affords each school a donation of twenty books, each carefully selected to complement the library or media center. Museum staff will present 10 books each year of the program to the school’s library. On this particular visit I was lucky enough to secure the time of Thomson students for a reading and short activity. As I read from Urban Animals, I paused to let the students call out the architectural forms mentioned in the book. “Door! Column! Window! Arch!” I didn’t have to do much directing, as the students were already versed in these basic architectural building elements. They enjoyed the reading and were hungry for more. Luckily, I had just enough time to read from another favorite, Kate Banks’ The Night Worker.
After the students made their way back to their respective classrooms, I made the formal donation of the first 10 books to Thomson’s librarian Amanda Oliver. I asked Ms. Oliver about the potential impact of the donation on the students: "Thomson Elementary is an International Baccalaureate school. As such our fifth grade students complete an exhibition project about a subject of their choice at the end of each school year. Many of the books donated, like Renewable Energy: Sources and Methods, Ocean, Tidal, and Wave Energy, etc. will be wonderful resources for these projects.”
Principal Carmen Shepherd has excitedly endorsed the program and has been an outstanding collaborator, working to make Adopt a School a success on the Thomson campus. Thomson’s partnering sponsor is CoStar Group, Inc. Along with Thomson Elementary, the founding Adopt a Schools are Shepherd Elementary, sponsored by The Tower Companies, and H.D. Cooke Elementary, sponsored by DAVIS construction. For more information about adopting a school in your community, contact the National Building Museum’s Development Department at 202.272.2448.
