$296,000 Grant Will Benefit Portland Children's Museum

PORTLAND, OR — The Portland Children's Museum's charter school for kids grades kindergarten through fifth is getting the largest grant it's ever received thanks to The Lemelson Foundation, a Portland-based non-profit specializing in international investments benefitting inventors and invention-based enterprises.

To support educational experience research at the museum's Opal School and the Museum Center for Learning, The Lemelson Foundation awarded the Portland Children's Museum a $296,000 grant for the Inspiring Agents of Change project — a collaborative study "of the learning conditions that support inventiveness in early childhood," according to the museum's spokeswoman Mary Beebe.

"Opal School and Portland Children's Museum are internationally recognized in the fields of early education and child development," Rachel Jagoda Brunette, program officer at The Lemelson Foundation, said in a statement. "Invention education sets students on a path for developing the problem-solving skills and self-confidence they need to lead productive and fulfilling lives. This exciting partnership will help us find ways to support invention education at the elementary school level."

Project Zero, a research center at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, will join the Opal School and the Museum Center for Learning on the Inspiring Agents of Change project, which ultimately hopes to determine the best ways to incorporate invention education into U.S. schools, and explain why that education is (or at least should be) an important part of every school's curriculum.

Beebe says The Lemelson Foundation is well-known for its investments into programs that benefit teens in high school and middle school, but noted this is the first time the foundation is helping younger kids.

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