STEM is the common educational way to refer to the intersections of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math. It’s been an academic buzzphrase for some time now, and indeed, these four topics cover lots in everyone’s daily lives.
But educators and even kids shy away from the tenets of STEM as their school lives wind on. So how doe we as teachers change the mindsets that get kids and their teachers to stop paying attention to STEM? Today on TeachHUB.com, frequent contributing writer Jacqui Murray, who is a seasoned ed-tech teacher based on the West Coast, spells out some ways that we can redirect our educational mindsets to ones that are more STEM-friendly.
Jacqui’s ideas include:
- Project the attitude that science and math are fun.
- Never act like these topics are difficult, that certain students will not like them.
- Embrace the concrete nature of answers in STEM topics.
- Don't let students see you get frustrated when you can't solve a problem in the first ten seconds.Revel in that feeling of accomplishment that comes with doing the impossible--finding the answer to a calculus formula (or division problem) or programming a robot to walk across the room.
Jacqui sums up her article like this: “These are just a start. If a story students read inspires a STEM activity, instead of skipping to the next check box in your curriculum, scaffold that student interest into a lesson that will be their WOW moment for the month -- or year. Yeah. STEM can do that.”
How do you teach STEM every day? Let us know in the comments section!
