Picture a ten-year-old named Maya at Middle Valley Elementary in Chattanooga, Tennessee. She is not touching a computer. She is sorting playing cards and counting pieces from a Cheetos bag with a classmate. By the end of the lesson she can explain superposition better than most adults. That’s Hamilton County’s new quantum education in action: real physics, taught with snack food, to a fifth grader.
This is not a science fair stunt. It is the new normal in Hamilton County Schools, where a program called TN QuantumWorks now reaches kids from kindergarten through senior year. Thirteen schools are piloting it this fall, with plans to go statewide if it works. For families here, Hamilton County’s quantum education is no longer a college topic. It’s part of the regular school day, free, for every kid.
Why a Power Company Is Teaching Science Class
The program exists because of an unusual local partner: EPB, Chattanooga’s publicly owned electric and internet utility. EPB spent $22 million on a quantum computer at its Quantum Center, built mainly to optimize the power grid, and that same machine is already reshaping Chattanooga’s electricity. Rather than keep it behind closed doors, EPB opened the computer to students too, teaming up with Hamilton County Schools, UT Chattanooga, and curriculum developer Thinking Media.
Deputy Superintendent Zac Brown said quantum computing is “almost certainly the future of industry,” and the district’s students “are the future of this community.” Superintendent Dr. Justin Robertson says the pilot lets teachers and students help shape the program, instead of just adopting someone else’s plan.
What Hamilton County’s Quantum Education Looks Like, by Age
Nobody hands a kindergartner a quantum algorithm. The curriculum scales up through four stages:
- Kindergarten through grade 2: hands-on discovery, no computers involved.
- Grades 3 through 5: ideas like qubits and superposition, explained through cards and coins.
- Middle school: deeper physics and early problem-solving.
- High school: real quantum programming on EPB’s actual IonQ computer.
Teachers say it works because it hides the hard math until kids are ready. Kim Elbakidze, who teaches computer science at Red Bank Middle School, says the curriculum takes “very abstract and hard-to-explain concepts” and makes them click. Sierra Magee runs the elementary eLab at Middle Valley. Her goal isn’t to mint physicists. It’s to get kids comfortable poking at a hard problem instead of avoiding it.
“This is a big bet, if I can use that language, for Chattanooga,” says Shannon Moody, chief of staff for Hamilton County Schools.
The Real Payoff for Families
Here’s the part that matters to a parent’s wallet. Specialized STEM camps often run several hundred dollars a week, out of reach for plenty of households. This program costs families nothing and runs during the regular school day, no matter what a family can afford.
There’s a longer payoff. Quantum technology could add trillions to the global economy in the coming decades, touching medicine, logistics, and energy. Chattanooga has lived this story before. Its fiber network, known as Gig City, already pulled tech jobs into a mid-sized city that might otherwise lose young talent to bigger metros. The bet is simple: do that again with quantum, so local kids can build a career without leaving home, the same logic behind the free coding program that recently went nationwide.
The Quantum Insider has tracked the rollout, calling it one of the first comprehensive K-12 quantum programs in the country.
Watch for Hamilton County’s results once the pilot wraps up. If the data holds up, expect more districts to start teaching quantum physics with snacks instead of textbooks. Maybe yours will be next.