Beginning as an informal K-12 educational outreach initiative with nine graduate students, four undergraduate students, and twelve parents volunteering as classroom leaders, 2015 marks the start of SASSAk12. Born of a mother and full-time graduate student’s passion for her children, education, and research, along with K-12 educators’ desires to bring more hands-on learning to the classroom, in our first year we reached around 600 sixth-graders within the diverse Osseo School District at a cost of only 59 cents per student.

Our second year saw rapid growth! We presented to 1300 sixth- and seventh-graders in the Osseo School District and expanded to reach 30 high school students at Gordon Parks High School. Our community of volunteers doubled and diversified, coming from Anthropology, Ecology Evolution and Behavior, and the Earth Sciences at the UMN and contribution to module development and social media initiatives.

Year three was marked with expanding the program to work with over 5,000 students from the Osseo School District, developing collaborations with White Bear Lake’s alternative learning center, and building an entire elective on biological anthropology and archaeology. Volunteers from Macalester College and St. Anthony Falls Laboratory (SAFL) joined our community and Executive Director, Katrina with other education and outreach specialists at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History.

We published! The SASSAk12 team and collaborating K-12 educators published a chapter about the SASSA in the Classroom program in a new book: Public Engagement and Education: Developing and Fostering Stewardship for an Archaeological Future (Ed. by Katherine Erdman, 2019). We expanded our target audience, working with elementary school students from the St. Anthony-New Brighton School District to provide a hands-on summer program to see what it is like to be on an archaeological dig!

Similar to many, our year started strong with the SASSAk12 community providing hands-on learning experiences to eager students! We adapted to the challenges presented by the COVID-19 pandemic and shutdown by providing online opportunities to meet scientists with diverse backgrounds and interests. We also took steps to invest in our future by developing a Youth Engaging in Research Program (YERP) in which students could conduct their own research with the support of mentors from around the country.

COVID hit us hard, and yet somehow also presented us with opportunities to reach out to even more distant and diverse communities! We developed a symposium at the American Association of Physical Anthropology conference in 2021, focused on “Connecting with Youth Scholars in the Era of COVID-19.” This allowed us to share in what we and other educators (and anthropologists) had learned across the globe while facing the challenges of reaching students during the COVID lockdown, with posters contributed by Joel Abdella and Samantha Porter We also developed learning modules for students within native Alaskan communities of the upper Alaskan Peninsula through collaborative consultation with the Council of Katmai Descendants, Katmai National Park & Preserve, and members of the Village of Perryville.

Now on the other side of COVID (and a PhD defense) we are eager to reintroduce SASSAk12 programming in schools! We are in the process of communicating with local educators about these efforts, while also taking the opportunity to improve and expand our teaching materials. We are also welcoming new members to our community with new graduate student volunteers who are excited to reach out and spread the word about our work, both in-person and online!