Butterflies are flowers that fly and all but sing for Carver campers visiting the Maritime Aquarium during a summer program.
For many Carver students, science doesn’t begin with a textbook — it begins with curiosity.
For many years, in addition to Carver students visiting the Maritime Aquarium in the summer (as seen in the accompanying images here), Carver has partnered with the Maritime Aquarium at Norwalk to bring high-quality, hands-on marine science and STEM learning directly into our middle school after-school and summer programs.
Through this longstanding collaboration, Aquarium educators travel to Carver school sites to deliver engaging, standards-aligned STEM experiences that connect students to the natural world just beyond their community.
Science That Comes to Them
Carver engages The Maritime Aquarium through our program budgets, allowing Aquarium educators to come directly into schools and meet students where they are. This model removes barriers to access while ensuring that students receive consistent, expert-led instruction rooted in real science, real ecosystems, and real-world problem-solving.
Rather than one-off assemblies, these sessions are embedded in Carver’s after-school and summer enrichment schedules, reinforcing classroom learning while giving students the freedom to explore, ask questions, and experiment.
Marine STEM for Middle School Learners
In Carver’s middle school programs, Aquarium educators lead Marine STEM experiences for grades 5–8 that are both age-appropriate and intellectually rigorous. Students might:
Examine the microscopic structures of plankton and learn why they matter to global ecosystems
Explore engineering concepts by understanding how structures — from marine organisms to roller coasters — are designed to function
Conduct hands-on experiments that show how science, technology, engineering, and math intersect in everyday life
Each session is interactive, inquiry-based, and designed to help students see STEM not as abstract subjects, but as tools for understanding and improving the world around them.
Learning That Feels Alive
What makes this partnership especially powerful is how alive learning becomes. Aquarium educators bring biofacts, live animals, and real scientific tools into the classroom, transforming school spaces into temporary laboratories of discovery. Students aren’t just learning about marine life — they’re touching, observing, questioning, and thinking like scientists.
For many Carver students, these experiences spark a deeper interest in environmental stewardship, engineering, and science-based careers—pathways that may once have felt distant or inaccessible.
A Shared Commitment to Equity and Excellence
Carver’s mission is to provide equitable access to high-quality enrichment for students across Norwalk and beyond. Our partnership with The Maritime Aquarium reflects a shared belief that hands-on science education should not be a privilege, but a core part of every child’s learning experience.
Whether during the school year or the summer months, this collaboration continues to help Carver students build confidence, curiosity, and critical-thinking skills — one discovery at a time.
Carver students in our 5th Grade Scholars after-school program at Jefferson Elementary School spent two hours aboard the Maritime Aquarium’s revolutionary R/V Spirit of the Sound!