"I was pretty underwhelmed with the offerings out there for elementary teachers to receive STEM training"
One day my daughter (then 3) asked me, “Mommy, are you not happy anymore?” I was stunned. I didn’t realize that the joy I once had developing new STEM products was vanishing and being replaced with visible stress. That was my wake-up call. It was time to find a new job.
I’ve been an 8th grade science teacher, 3-8 gifted education teacher, differentiation and math coach and worked in informal education. I often find myself in newly created positions and enjoy the challenge and responsibility of helping define the new roles. Yet, I also needed something that was going to energize me. That meant working directly with students once again, i.e. teaching. It didn’t take long for me to find it, my dream job. K-5 STEM Teacher. I didn’t even know a job like that existed. I was to be the pilot teacher for the program working mainly with 4th and 5th graders teaching and evaluating PLTW and LEGO robotics (EV3 & WeDo).
Elementary STEM
How might we effectively prepare and support elementary teachers to teach STEM?
Fortunately, I had an amazing science methods professor (Augustana University, SD) in undergrad and an awesome team of professors in my MS in Natural Science program (University of Wyoming) so I felt pretty confident about teaching the science. After working with engineering experts from Purdue University and Texas A&M on the STEM product line (ETA hand2mind) I realized I still had lots of growing to do in my engineering education skills and theory. Looking around at different programs I was pretty underwhelmed with the offerings out there for elementary teachers to receive STEM training, specifically in engineering education. STEM is becoming a prevalent strand at conferences but from my experience in the sessions I’ve attended the E in STEM was still lacking. The topic might be an engineering topic but the hands-on was still science-based not design-based. My role as a K-5 STEM Teacher is to introduce engineering design (NGSS ETS) and robotics to students and their classroom teachers, it is still the classroom teacher’s responsibility to teach the NGSS.
Looking around at different programs I was pretty underwhelmed with the offerings out there for elementary teachers to receive STEM training, specifically in engineering education.
I found what I was looking for in an email. I had joined the International Technology and Engineering Education Association (ITEEA) listserve to keep up to date on resources and events and there it was. A STEM Certificate program through Tufts University that focused on engineering education and utilized the LEGO Mindstorms robot that was also part of my program. I had missed the registration deadline but contacted the group anyway for more information and was able to get in only a week behind. The cohort program consisted of 4 courses taken 1 at a time with educators from around the world. We read research articles, reflected on video lessons from other teachers as well as each other, recorded our own student interviews about how something works and engineering lessons, and got hands-on designing and testing with LEGOs and craft materials.
It challenged me to include more problem scoping and student agency in my design challenges rather than always providing clear criteria and constraints for a specified user or client. It challenged me to try rapid prototyping with my students that allowed them to redesign and test their prototypes multiple times within the same lesson, not just once or twice. My kindergarten students had a blast continuously improving their “drones” so they would hover inside our wind tunnels. My 4th graders were proud of themselves after building taller newspaper towers repeatedly.
WHAT CHALLENGES HAVE YOU ENCOUNTERED IN YOUR CAREER AS A STEM EDUCATOR?
I truly feel that I am a much better STEM teacher after completing the STEM Certificate program. It has helped me be more reflective, provide more student agency, engage in better whole class discourse, and create and evaluate STEM lessons for more effective engineering instruction. Because I’m a natural life-long learner my newest focus is design thinking and I’m in the middle of a great course with Launch author A.J. Juliani called Innovative Teaching Academy. Check it out on Twitter #ITA17. I encourage any teacher out there to go find your tribe and don’t give up on finding good STEM PD. You’ll know it when you see it. Now go, be the change.