NIHF_STEM_Middle_School

The other day I visited the Akron National Inventors Hall of Fame STEM Middle School. Sam Crews was so kind as to take me around, show me the facilities and pop into a few classrooms. They are a 5-8 school of about 400 students that opened in 2009 in a temporary facility. They moved into the NIHF building in 2010 after renovating and adding on classrooms. The 108  new fifth graders get into the school via a lottery, with each area that Akron Public Schools covers getting 12 slots and allowing 12 slots for out of District students. Their core is Problem Based Learning utilizing partnerships with businesses around Akron, Goodyear being one of them. The classrooms have a movable wall between them to aid the cross curricular aspect of PBL. For example, when working on a project, the English and Science classrooms can become one big one so the kids can go to the area they need to work on at the moment and get access to multiple teachers  in the same time period. 
In addition to classrooms, they have a gym, a stage area, an Invention Incubator for quick prototyping, a library/media area, engineering space, and digital fabrication space. They also have a space for the students teachers from the University of Akron.