In the Ephrata, Pa., district, students step outside their schools and board a Maker Bus to work on creative projects.
It’s a mobile take on the 20-year-old maker movement, which encourages schools to build “makerspaces” where students can tinker with tools and materials, show content mastery in innovative ways, and learn from mistakes. But instead of finding space in each school building, the Ephrata district put its makerspace on wheels.
The bus, wrapped in a bright purple design, rotates between the district’s schools as part of a larger strategy to encourage students’ collaboration, problem solving, and creativity.
The vehicle itself was a hands-on project. High school metalworking students retrofitted the retired bus, replacing rows of seats with butcher-block work stations, a tool cabinet, a 3D printer, and a laser cutter.
“Now, that’s a living example of us turning the keys over to the students, and promoting instructional changes that increase autonomy and agency,” Ephrata Superintendent Brian Troop told Education Week in April.
On a recent school day, students at Fulton Elementary School worked on the bus to make laser-cut maps of their town and assemble a wooden “bee hotel” with a little assistance from adults. Those projects are tied to “cornerstone” themes at each grade level that become the focus of assignments that give students’ opportunities to demonstrate content knowledge alongside “life-ready” graduate skills, like civic mindedness and adaptability.
