The John W. Knight Curiosity Lab is in the heart of Breakwater, supporting an evolved and amplified tinkering program for our student body, as well as a broad variety of enrichment classes and summer programs that serve students from across Southern Maine.
A SPACE
The John W. Knight Curiosity Lab is a physical space that features innovation, technology and entrepreneurship learning activities, tools and experiences for youth. More than a maker space, more than a computer lab, the JWK Curiosity Lab encourages learners of all ages to wonder, explore, deconstruct and invent.
A MINDSET
More than the space, the Curiosity Lab is a philosophy that fosters and promotes a curiosity mindset. Our learners are encouraged to be inquisitors, researchers, builders, tinkerers, scientists, artists, engineers, re-imaginers and myth busters, not just in the lab, but outside of school and across their lifetimes.
WHAT WE DO
Cultivate curious generations. The JWK Curiosity Lab supports youth in developing the appetite, expectations and learning approaches to support their lifelong curiosity and creativity.
Tinker with education. The Lab allows us to experiment with and refine a pedagogical approach that supports effective curiosity driven learning.
Elevate what we already do. Breakwater has supported this hands-on, curiosity based approach to education through our existing tinkering program, formally begun in 2009. The JWK Curiosity Lab provides space, access and resources to build unique and solid curriculum for Kindergarten through grade 8 and strengthens Breakwater’s model of integrated learning through play and discovery.
The JWK Curiosity Lab provides rich streams of experiences, questioning and novelty, fostering “conversations with phenomena” via art, tinkering, making, and other opportunities to interact with the Lab’s library of tools, materials, technologies and interactive components.
Here youth are encouraged to ask how does it work, why does it work that way and how could it work.
The ultimate goals are to not only spark curiosity, but scaffold it so that learners are guided into deeper exploration and mastery, and to help learners not only develop key readiness skills such as STEM, grit, resilience and self-confidence, but also a broader curiosity mindset that prepares them to be active contributors, creators and entrepreneurs..
Contributions to the JWK Curiosity Lab Fund help to provide:
scholarships to students in the Greater Portland area participating in our after school Enrichment Program and Summer at Breakwater, giving a diverse student body unparalleled access to the opportunity to follow their creative vision, pursue competence, and design their environments;
robust curriculum of open-ended tinkering, woodworking, engineering, and design at Breakwater;
our Curiosity Lab Tech Center, a new space dedicated to digital fabrication and design;
investments in technology to explore virtual reality for design purposes, coding and programming, and robotics engineering;
the cultivation of a new generation of innovators, inventors, engineers, artists, designers, thinkers, and makers.
About John W. Knight
John W. Knight was a brilliant engineer who was constantly inspired by and curious about the world around him. He had an insatiable appetite for knowledge and innovation, constantly seeking to understand how everything worked, and even further, how it might be done differently. As part of his legacy, we want to inspire a similar limitless curiosity and endless enthusiasm for making, breaking, understanding and questioning for youth across Maine
