The OMSI Lab in Hillsboro

Bringing OMSI Experiences to Hillsboro School District

It’s 9 a.m. at Tamarack Elementary School in Hillsboro, and kids stream into the building in matching summer camp T-shirts. Camp instructors listen as their campers proudly show them Harry Potter wands they made and share what they’re excited about for the day ahead. It’s a packed day of OMSI summer classes at the school—tie-dying, LEGO robotics, chemistry—and it’s all the counselors can do to form them into lines before heading into the building to begin.

For decades, OMSI has supported science education in schools across the region, and its partnership with the Hillsboro School District is one of the most recent collaborations. This project, the Regional Educator Program, places OMSI educators directly within communities to bring STEAM education around the region. At Tamarack, an OMSI educator delivers programming to more than 1,300 students in four schools across the district during the school year and to even more during the summer camps and classes.

The OMSI Lab

Located within Tamarack, the OMSI lab offers students the opportunity to learn core STEAM principles through hands-on, real-world applications, and includes a Think Tank for small group work. Maddie Ehl, OMSI’s educator in Hillsboro, uses her unique position to focus on continuity in curriculum across grade levels, which encourages siblings to discuss their projects together and fosters student collaboration.

During the 2023-24 school year, Maddie engaged students with lessons on freshwater ecosystems inspired by the school mascot, the river otter, and led an engineering unit focused on building an amusement park,from a Ferris wheel to carnival games.

“It’s been really, really fun to watch the students grow throughout the year,” Maddie says. “It was such a new concept that I remember on the first day of school, the kids would come in unsure, asking, ‘What are we even going to do in this class?’ There was just this excitement and buzz around OMSI being within their school. As the year progressed, each day brought new opportunities to explore topics that their regular classroom schedules might not allow them to fully dive into.”

Beyond the School Year

OMSI’s partnership with Tamarack extends beyond the school day and academic year, offering bustling classes during the summer, a club after school, and field trips to the museum. Students, teachers, and parents alike feel the additional support and supplemental hands-on learning and exploration.

A First of Its Kind

The Hillsboro-OMSI partnership was born from the knowledge that the Portland Metro Area remains inaccessible for many in Oregon. Some students had never visited the museum in Portland

before. By bringing OMSI’s resources and innovative teaching directly to the area and embedding a dedicated educator in the school district, OMSI is breaking down barriers to access and better serving the residents of the region.

Christy Walters, principal of Tamarack, says, “Bringing OMSI and to be able to support those sorts of opportunities for kids who don’t get to cross the river all the time, who, unlike myself, didn’t have a family pass to be able to take their child across the river . . . is a huge gift. But it’s also a right of our educational and shared experiences.”

Tamarack is the first school to have an OMSI-embedded lab but hopefully not the last. “Down the road,” Maddie shares, “one of our goals at OMSI is creating this kind of museum education model within schools. . . . Our hope is to expand this initiative well beyond its current scope.”