Students at 42nd Street Elementary, part of the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), noticed that balls kicked, thrown and bounced onto the roof were never recovered. During the 2025–2026 school year one class of third graders, taught by Miguel Sanchez, decided to solve that problem, and another, taught by Linda Allen, set out to redesign the school’s outdoor recreation space.
Both projects were part of FutureMakers42, a professional learning series for elementary teachers, developed by USC Rossier’s USC STEM Center. The series was created and led by Shanta Smith, USC Rossier associate professor of clinical education, and Kendrick Davis, co-director of the USC STEM Center. The 2025–26 pilot grew out of three years of work Smith had completed with the school, supporting teachers in integrated STEAM instruction.
“After three years of working alongside the teachers at 42nd Street, FutureMakers42 felt like the natural next step,” said Smith. “We wanted to build something with them, not bring something to them.”
Teachers lead, students build
Smith and Davis ran ten sessions over the school year, ending with a spring symposium. Allen and Sanchez co-developed the teaching guide and curriculum with them, then led all classroom instruction themselves. The work took place during regular math and science class time, rather than after school.
“Whether a third grader sees themselves as a science person or a math person is shaped by a teacher,” added Davis. “FutureMakers42 is a professional learning series whose key elements—the teaching guide, the classroom activities—were co-developed with the teachers. That’s the partnership.”
Using program activities relevant to third grade standards and curriculum, an elementary-scale version of the National Academy of Engineering’s Grand Challenges was used. Students surveyed their own campus, listed problems, selected one then worked through five steps: observe and question, research, design, prototype and test. Each class worked in four teams, and every student took on a role: writer, researcher, engineer, illustrator or programmer.
Allen’s class proposed ways to divide a flat stretch of the recreation space into growing areas, activity zones, spaces for music and art, a trampoline and a food service area. Students built digital models of their designs in Scratch, a free, block-based coding platform for kids. Sanchez’s class developed four ways to retrieve equipment from the roof, one per team: a ramp paired with a drone, a rope-and-bucket system, a remote-controlled retrieval device and a robotic spider.
Both classes researched material costs and presented budgets. They also considered who would use and benefit from their designs and identified the permissions they would need. The guide ties these activities to several third-grade standards, including Common Core and NGSS, in area, perimeter, data graphing, budgeting, forces and motion, engineering design and computational thinking.
“The students got to work collaboratively and got to approach this STEAM challenge creatively and curiously,” added Sanchez.
Eight student teams presented their designs at the spring symposium, the program’s culminating event
From classroom to cleanroom
Last spring, the teachers visited USC, where Shivakumar Bhaskaran, associate director of the USC Viterbi John O’Brien Nanofabrication Laboratory, led a tour. The visit included the 3D printing students do in class to advanced manufacturing, including how semiconductor patterns are built layer by layer on silicon wafers.
What comes next
Eight student teams presented their designs at the spring symposium, which was the program’s culminating event. The school retains the teaching guide and can use the documented work toward LAUSD STEM/STEAM certification. The program ran as a pilot, and teacher feedback has not yet been collected, so no outcomes are claimed. A feedback instrument is proposed, and a manuscript is planned for the journal School-University Partnerships. Because this was a pilot year, the team is developing a survey to gather teacher feedback and plans to submit a manuscript to the journal School-University Partnerships.
Smith said, “It’s never too early for children to design, test and improve real-world solutions.”
