BSB Teacher Mr. Burkhill's update from MIT 2017

April 2017 saw four BSB Shunyi Year 6 students and myself joined 24 other schools from across the Nord Anglia family to congregate in Cambridge, USA for the 2017 Nord Anglia-MIT S.T.E.A.M.fest. This year is the first of its kind on this scale giving students the chance to visit, work in and experience both the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University.

Each day we met and collaborated with the kind of inspirational minds that you only read and hear about in the news. To see such places as the Koch Institute and witness real cancer research happening in front of your eyes is the definition of inspiring. Furthermore, to be able to quote a Year 6 student as saying "I want to work hear when I'm older." is precisely the reason we run these trips.

I was consistently surprised at just how many questions the students had for the numerous nuclear physicists, biological engineers and actual rocket scientists we met over the week. They fully appreciated the magnitude of where they were and the potential once-in-a-lifetime opportunity they were presented with - after all, how many times do you meet these kinds of people!

Students took part in a huge variety of S.T.E.A.M. activities from plastic moulding experiments, the science of fencing, vacuum canon and archery, designing, building and testing their own carnival stalls, circuit building, virtual reality and pattern recognition.

The tours around MIT and Harvard University gave the opportunity to witness a huge variety of departments but all of them were searching for ways of making a better future. The students were enthralled to hear stories and see the likes of the dorm room where Facebook was invented!

The humble nature of everyone we met was incredible! None of them showing any signs that they were working in one of the best universities in the world or that they were genuinely creating revolutionary changes for the human race. Something that could not be ignored was the absolute joy of learning and discovering exhibited by every student we met - the place just immediately sucked you in to this way of thinking. We could come away from MIT with the security that if our future has anything to do with the people walking those halls, I think we have a lot of reason to be optimistic.

Updates from: Mr. Richard Burkhill, Year 6 Class Teacher / Primary Computing Advisor