t Brookings EL Museum Magnet, students learn by stimulating their own curiosity and excitement about worlds beyond their previous imagination. At Brookings, teaching and learning is oriented around “big idea” projects in which teachers at each grade level plan units or lessons around common themes.

Purposeful Museum Visits:

The typical one-day “field trip” is replaced in a Museum school by more purposeful “field-work,” planned by museum educators and classroom teachers who align exhibit and artifact study with specific curriculum targets. Follow-up classroom work can include Internet research, journal entries, letter- and story-writing, interviewing, creating models and displays for public exhibition.

Academic Focus and Support:

Brookings has benefited from a partnership with Focus on Results and the state department of education to provide all teachers with top-level professional development with a specific focus on English Language Arts and Math. At Brookings, an attention to literacy, in all its forms, is at the heart of all we do. Hands-on learning projects incorporate multiple subject areas and makes learning more relevant and powerful for students.

 Student Exhibitions:

As part of their EL/Museum studies, students design, construct and learn to display — just as museums do — artifacts and exhibition pieces as part of their learning experiences, showcasing their work for families and the community in the Brookings Gallery and during school wide Celebrations of Learning. During these exhibitions, the whole school is transformed into a place where history and learning come alive. Students become “docents,” explaining their work products and their relevance to what they are studying, making their learning more ingrained and powerful.

On the horizon — a new Brookings:

Ground breaking took place in June for a new Brookings School that will replace the old building that was seriously damaged in the tornado of June 2011.  The new school, which will be located on Walnut Street, will open in the fall of 2015 and offer students the best education possible in a world-class facility.  We look forward to serving generations of students to come in this new, state-of-the-art building!