Every summer, K-12 STEM teachers from across New York City public schools converge in Harlem for the four-week Center for Smart Streetscapes (CS3) Research Experience for Teachers (RET).
Educators are the everyday heroes for K-12 students, and the Center for Smart Streetscapes conducts the RET program to support these educators as they raise future leaders. With a $5,000 stipend for participating educators, RET covers topics at the forefront of the field from engineering issues to culturally inclusive pedagogy.
The second cohort of RET recently completed the program by engaging our high school students in the My Streetscape Summer Research Institute with lessons designed to be taken back to the classroom. Congratulations to our incredible educators on their accomplishments this summer:
- Joel Bianchi, Energy Tech High School
- Sharon Bottu, Brooklyn High School for Law and Technology
- Alexandra Chukhareva, Energy Tech High School
- Stacy Goldstein, Midwood High School
- Parmanand Mohanlall, Brooklyn Latin School
- Brooke Williams, Arthur Tappan PS46
We also thank Mehmet Turkcan, Gillian Bayne, and Fernanda Martinez for their leadership in the program.
RET is one of the cornerstones of our Engineering Workforce Development programs that raise the next generation of smart city innovators through educational experiences for high schoolers, undergraduates, graduate students, and teachers.
Join the CS3 Monthly Newsletter here to be the first to know when 2025 RET applications open.
Explore the 2024 RET in pictures and social media below.
Research Experience for Teachers in Pictures📸
Final Presentations
2024 RET cohort with their mentors on final presentation day 
Fernanda Martinez kicks off the final presentations with our My Streetscape Summer Research Institute high schoolers 
Gillian Bayne introduces the high schoolers to culturally inclusive pedagogy 
Sharon Bottu overviews the teachers’ engineering work this summer 
Alexandra Chukhareva and Joel Bianchi lead a lesson involving yarn and constructing neural networks 
Stacy Goldstein demonstrates how object recognition varies from one country to another, complicating the training of artificial intelligence (AI) models 
Parmanand Mohanlall teaches on the role of bias in artificial intelligence image recognition, and how to measure it with data 
Brooke Williams delivers a lesson on how bicycles have the power to bring students together, and the ways to build on her school’s bicycle program in the classroom 
Sharon Bottu delivers the final lesson plan on how students can learn math from traffic trends 
The teachers debrief following their lesson plan presentations 
The teachers receive their certificates!🎊
Lessons
Orientation
CS3 Social Media
Instagram Story
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