The Dream, Invent, Create Career Awareness Program
Making engineering careers come alive for elementary students!
Career awareness in elementary school? Yes!
Kids are born engineers! From their earliest years, they dream up incredible inventions, build them, tear them apart, and then rebuild even better. Using whatever materials they can find in whatever ways they can imagine. Just as engineers do.
But somewhere along the way, kids lose touch with their inner engineer. And we as a country pay the price as too few of our brightest, most creative students choose engineering as a course of study and work. At a time when engineers are disproportionately aging out of the workforce and technologies are innovating ever-more rapidly, we need fresh, young, energetic people going into the field.
That’s why we developed the Dream, Invent, Create Career Awareness Program
It offers all the tools elementary educators need to inspire kids to imagine themselves as engineers, bringing their inventions to life and making the world a better place for all of us.
What’s included:
Dream, Invent, Create — a 40-page introduction to all the major fields of engineering, with whimsical rhymes and fun illustrations, available in English or English-Spanish versions.
Guide for Teachers — a 70-page PDF that helps educators show kids what a career in engineering can offer.
Student Workbook — a 30-page PDF companion for students to complete thought questions, learning exercises, and career reflections.
Why the DIC Career Awareness Program?
It’s an all-in-one program to introduce engineering as a field to kids at just the age when they are starting to formulate possible career identities.
It’s designed for educators with no training in the field.
It’s an engaging introduction to 4 fields with great prospects for both career opportunities and personal satisfaction: biomedical, computer, electrical, and environmental engineering.
Career awareness is commonly written into learning standards all across the country — increasingly, schools have to be addressing this topic.
The DIC Career Awareness Program is easy to teach for any elementary educator. It offers:
Many hours of basic and advanced lessons.
Career reflection exercises to connect kids’ learning to ideas about future career paths.
Guidance for educators throughout, including vocabulary lists, thought questions, full descriptions of engineering fields,
and an overview of teaching the engineering design process.Alignment with Next Generation Science Standards.
Dream, Invent, Create is on the NSTA Recommends list, and these teachers explain why:
“What a great presentation of areas that engineering affects in a kid-friendly style.” — Denise Skinner, Cannon STEM, Grapevine, TX
“Very engaging and wonderful graphics. I would love to read this to a group of young engineers!” — Jim Forde, Stamford Public Schools, Stamford, CT
“A great book to get students excited and informed about engineering.” — Elise Zolczynski, Community Resources for Science, Berkeley, CA
Find out more about how teachers have used Dream, Invent, Create in their classrooms and what the Guide for Teachers is all about.
Package pricing for print or digital versions of the DIC Career Awareness Program is in our Shop. And discounts are available for bulk purchases. Please get in touch with any questions!