We Design & Deliver Curriculum and Programs

BARI’s K-12 programming supports Greater Boston’s young people to harness their research, data, tech skills, and local knowledge to make real, meaningful change in their communities and shape our rapidly evolving world. Our work ensures that today’s young civic leaders are not only critical thinkers embedded in their communities, but that they are also data-driven and fluent in their use of technology and digital platforms.

BARI’s educational partnerships elevate the voices of young researchers by creating spaces for sharing civic research, data, and tech work of K-12 students.

  • School Partnerships:
    • BARI team members provide support and mentorship to Boston Public Schools (BPS) high school students in AP Seminar and AP Research courses as they prepare their research papers and presentations.
      • Students from Charlestown High School attended BARI Conference 2026, where two students from Boston Latin Academy presented in the poster session.
      • For the second year, BARI Advisory Committee and research team members served as judges at the Boston Latin Academy Research Festival, providing feedback and encouragement to young researchers. The winners of the Festival will present their research in the poster session at BARI Conference 2027.
    • BPS school librarians all received training on the Boston Data Portal as a resource for educators and students. As a result, the BARI team was invited to give a lesson on data visualization to second graders at the William Russell Elementary School in Dorchester. They analyzed the types of restaurants within a 5, 10, or 15 minute walk from their school and created line, pie, and bar graphs of their findings.
  • What The Tech? is an after-school spring workshop and summer internship program that engages young Bostonians in serious questions regarding data science and emergent technology, including artificial intelligence (AI), from their potentials and perils to their impacts on the city they call home.
  • Open source curricula used by BARI as part of the What the Tech? programs and shared with K-12 educators who want to incorporate our lessons into their syllabus.
  • The team also engages with youth as part of the Common SENSES sensor placement and mitigation planning processes.