School Partnerships

School students working on an Urban Assembly project with cardboard and glue around a table

We believe that applying our approach in classrooms increases student academic engagement and creates more accessible learning experiences for students least served by conventional educational environments. Projects created through Beam’s school partnerships are tangible expressions of student learning that connect the knowledge of the way things are made to the students’ agency over their lives and futures.

In Beam’s school partnerships students and educators collaborate with unique, creative, and technical professionals and practices. They are welcomed into an unconventional space: a social learning environment in which both individuality and the collective experience are equally important and where project completion is not a direct marker of “success.” They explore their interests and authentic selves through the project-making process, fostering a rigorous and joyful educational journey.

Since 2012, Beam Center has fostered year-round partnerships with schools to co-create curriculum aligned hands-on projects and provide an alternative approach to traditional in-class instruction.

Drawing from our Learning Productions framework, our partnerships incorporate new relationships, tools, and materials into school spaces. Through our work in grades K-12, we create new learning opportunities for both students and teachers across Brooklyn, the Bronx, Manhattan, and Queens.

Beam Center students working on the 2021 CONSTELLATION project with construction foam
School student smiling at camera while holding a DNA helix project

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In-School Projects

Our in-school projects support and connect to a broad range of learning experiences and subject areas, including geometry, physics, history, biology, creative writing, and beyond. These projects happen during the school day in classrooms or in the Fab Labs we’ve helped develop. All the tools and materials needed for a project are gathered by Beam, including crafting supplies, circuitry, and more. We have designed over 300 projects with our partner schools, reaching over 16,403 students at all grade levels since 2015.

We offer a few approaches to project design. Some school projects are fully designed in-house by Beam Center Project Designers and shared with schools, while others are designed by teachers in collaboration with our Project Designers. In addition, some projects are designed in a collaborative process driven by youth voices.

Our in-school projects range in scale, from large communal projects like this model coliseum and performance or this indoor hydroponic garden, to smaller group projects that allow for more freedom in design and expression.

Urban Assembly School of Design and Construction students performing on a stage for Coliseum project

Coliseum and performance

Hydroponic tube garden setup on a wall inside a building

Indoor hydroponic garden

While creating these projects, students engage in authentic creative processes such as woodworking, mold-making and ceramic casting, set design and digital processes like stop-motion animation or narrative design, illustration, and electronics, among many others!

Young student using a circular saw on a piece of wood. Three other students are watching in the background.
Two young students sitting on the floor while using stamps to create illustrations of figures on a piece of fabric.

We believe that it is important for students to share and celebrate their work, allowing them to take ownership of and pride in what they’ve accomplished. Each in-school project features a celebratory moment, ranging from a simple presentation to something much more elaborate, like a shared performance.

Installation of a large umbrella made out of colorful plastic bottles. The umbrella structure is made of metal poles.

After completing a Beam in-school project, students are able to explore their new skills and interests through our Apprenticeship program and youth employment enterprises.

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FabLabs

FabLabs are tool and material rich environments that enable students to experience the process of innovation and collaboration while integrating knowledge from all subject areas. FabLabs link art, design, and technology to expand applicability of and enthusiasm for science, math, and engineering. By stocking these open workshop environments with tools, materials, technology, and expertise, Beam supports students in making their ideas tangible. We have assisted 12 schools with the creation of FabLabs since 2016 and consulted on the creation of other maker spaces in others.

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Teacher Professional Development

Through our School Partnerships, our goal is for students to use real tools, practices, and creative processes to make collaborative and expressive projects. Achieving that goal starts by inviting teachers into our spaces and providing them with their own hands-on experiences learning new skills, practicing design and prototyping, and building together.

Teacher Professional Development is a two step process; first teachers complete Beam’s Fundamentals session where they learn to make projects designed by Beam. Once complete, teachers move on to our Project Design session where they learn to design projects themselves.

Teachers from our partner schools have gotten to learn everything from electronics to woodworking and using power tools to digital fabrication techniques, and many other creative disciplines in between!

NYC school teachers standing in front of a table with light-up flower baskets in front of them
School teachers standing around a wooden table in a workshop. Papers are spread out on the table.

Part of this learning process involves completing design challenges, where teachers collaborate with their colleagues to invent new objects that perform a certain task. Mirroring our in-school projects framework, teachers share their inventions with one another and describe the design decisions they made, as well as the surprises and challenges they experienced.

Our Teacher Professional Development sessions aim to support teachers as they design and build a project for their own classrooms. Each project is made to fit the particular needs and curriculum content of the teachers involved. After working with Beam, teachers are able to model the creative learning process for their own students.

  • Beam Center intern smiling while looking off to the side of the camera

    —Edwin, Former Beam Intern, Brooklyn International High School

    Beam Center keeps bringing me back to the atmosphere of passion - for learning and for benefiting our community. Being an intern at Beam, making one of a kind items, helped me define my spirit and develop the skills of professionalism, teamwork, creativity and more.

  • High school student standing outside in front of greenery and smiling at camera

    —Hifza, Thomas A. Edison Career and Technical Education High School, Class of 2022

    Building our Escape Room was for sure my biggest accomplishment as a senior, and we definitely had a good experience with [Beam Project Designers] Kyle and Mitchell. The most important things I have learned from Beam are skills like critical thinking, collaboration, problem solving, conflict resolution, and leadership skills, and I know I will use these skills in the future. We learned how to collectively work as a class to build a very large scale project like the Escape Room, and it was all worth it in the end.

  • Bronx school teacher helping a young student use a sewing machine

    —Marilo Cuyacot, Math teacher at Bronx International High School

    Beam offers projects that require us to create and edit items to produce something authentic...as well as projects that can extend beyond the classroom. Unlike traditional education, Beam nurtures students in a transformative way. It is very rewarding for me to see my students learn and apply what they learn to improve their lives.