The Two Bit Circus Foundation brings STEAM education to K-12 students in the most underserved areas of Los Angeles County. The schools we work with are largely attended by underrepresented minority students that lack access to the training needed to enter into professional STEAM careers. The objective of this grant is to bring STEAM Lab Makerspaces into 8 title one schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District to address this problem. Our STEAM Labs are a perfect creative space that allow students to engage in project-based learning.

Our STEAM labs are installed on campus and are run by school staff with our foundation available for professional development and student workshops. We work with the teachers to make sure their Lab is functioning in the most efficient way for their needs. Our project playbook, which comes with the Lab, has been NGSS standards aligned to help educators integrate STEAM curriculum into their lesson plans. By helping educators understand our maker mentality through professional development workshops we create an incubator for creativity, facilitating teacher interaction with students and student entrepreneurialism. African American, Latino, and American Indian students currently make up 30 percent of the US population, by 2050 this number will be over 40 percent. In contrast to these numbers, the representation of minorities graduating with degrees in STEAM related fields is roughly 12.5 percent. Our Labs are designed to combat this racial gap in STEAM fields by enriching student curriculum and experiences through project-based learning, helping them to find their passion in the world of STEAM.