By Blake Haas

Normal – To help with an afterschool partnership, the Children’s Discovery Museum has been awarded a $20,000 grant from State Farm.

The afterschool program is in partnership with Illinois State University and UNITY Community Center, allowing students to build relationships with at-risk youth through the Innovation Institute Program.

“One of the things that are really important to us as an institution is to write grants so that we can support outreach programs for children who may not be able to access quality STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) education through the museum and other ways,” said Children’s Discovery Museum Education Manager Rachel Carpenter. “This program brings hands-on activities; it helps students practice problem-solving and offers them the opportunity to become their own experts.”

Carpenter added the program also allows future science teachers to get hands-on experience.

“The program is one where our educators here at the museum visit the center typically twice a week. So one of those days, we’re visiting the youth and providing hands-on STEM education activities that are fun and innovative and exciting for those kids,” added Carpenter. “The other day that we visit is working with the teams, and that is really cool because that’s where our ISU partners become involved.

“So there’s actually a class where students need clinical hours working with diverse students, and those are students who are studying to be Science teachers.”

This year the program won the state’s top honor for Best Practices in Educational Programs during the annual Illinois Association of Museum’s conference.

You can learn more about the program by clicking here: https://www.childrensdiscoverymuseum.net/

Blake Haas can be reached at [email protected].