The National Hurricane Museum & Science Center has brought together an advisory panel of educators, scientists and policy-makers to help in making a curriculum for middle school children.

Two workshops were recently held in Washington, D.C., and Baton Rouge, where organizers brainstormed about educational goals and the focus of NHMSC’s mission. Officials from the Smithsonian, National Geographic, National Science Foundation and the Discovery Channel attended the meetings.

The curriculum initiative will center on extreme weather events and coastal preservation.

Jill Kidder, consulting project coordinator, said the curriculum will be a “strong, stimulating course for STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) education because it’s going to be exciting.”

“Our exhibits will reflect what we will be creating and will support our educational initiative,” Kidder said. “But what we’re producing can be accessed prior to the building opening.”

The museum and science center has raised $38 million of the $68 million needed to construct the facility in Lake Charles.

Once completed, the curriculum will be distributed mostly digitally among the five Gulf Coast states, said Robert Sullivan, a consultant with the Washington, D.C.-based firm Chora. He said the goal is to test the material in about six districts, which will evaluate and adopt the subject matter into their programs.

“Once we have teachers and superintendents on board and see the value of it, then we will try to adopt it more broadly on a nationwide basis,” Sullivan said.

Experimental units will begin to be produced and distributed within the next semester of the school year, Sullivan added.

“This is a terrific way to pull STEM learning together into a cohesive curriculum,” Sullivan said. “It’s a subject that’s functional for kids. Kids experience severe weather. They experience this in their lives and they understand why they are learning about it.”

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Online: www.nhmsc.com(MGNonline)