ST(EM)POWERED

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Why Shouldn't Education Be Fun?

Recently, I have seen some examples of what I will call "fun-shaming" in education. While there is certainly a case to be made for the idea that education shouldn't be engaging alone, looking down on a lesson because it teaches physics AND is fun (hi, almost all experiments involving baking soda), makes zero sense. You can't just play and have fun all day instead of learning, but why on earth not in addition to learning? If we would rather work at jobs where our skills are valued, we are compensated adequately, and we enjoy our colleagues and workspace and our work itself, why wouldn't we espouse the same theory in classrooms and schools? It starts with a culture of people who love their jobs, and love kids. Most educators start out this way! You know the saying, teachers don't join for the million dollar paychecks. Principals and other admin are under a lot of pressure, students are coming from a range of backgrounds, skills, and needs. Finding a way to

Why Skills Matter More Than Content - and Why We Need to Teach Them

I recently pitched an idea about consulting with schools to embed explicit instruction in 21st century skills (communication, collaboration etc.) to a room full of peers, judges, and investors. I was a panicked, nervous wreck and did not perform as well as I hoped. Other educators also pitched a plethora of wonderful (and winning) ideas that included cooking lessons for English language learners, using virtual reality field trips for rural students, and connecting elementary students with elderly patients in nursing care facilities. I'm proud to be part of a community of such empathetic and motivated educators. Seriously, it gives me hope for our students and our future. Over 80% of the groups that pitched also mentioned skills in conjunction with their projects. "This will be great, and it will help them with collaboration!" "They will learn, have fun, and innovate!" And they were all right! But, we can't just continue to add these skills on as an afte

Pathways to Success

As graduation swiftly approaches, I'm bombarded every day with what students are doing after high school. They come in and excitedly share that they were accepted to their dream school, their reach school, the local school, their parent's alma mater, the place where they will have a full ride, or a sweet scholarship. They are thrilled to go into the military, to land a coveted summer internship, to join the family business, to pursue their passions, or take a gap year. They ask for advice, they jump up and down, and they all smile about the possibilities of the future. But no two stories are the same. No two students want or need the same thing during high school, let alone after. I think about this constantly. If the needs are so varied, how do we help them all? Consider the following examples, (all of which are true). In one graduating class, we had a student who was mature, and academically successful, but whose ACT score didn't reflect that. That student took advantag

Why Your Child Should Attend STEM School

This is a question I get A LOT. Sometimes from parents of younger siblings who are on the fence about attending, sometimes from people who have never heard of us, and even sometimes at Starbuck's when I'm wearing a STEM shirt before work. I have too many answers to share them all when I am asked, but I will try to share them here. 1. The number of people who tour our school and say the following: "I wish I had an option like this when I was in school." On the surface this sounds like just a nice compliment, but in reality it says something about the depth of people's disillusionment with more traditional educational models, that have not changed in decades or longer. Research tells us again and again what students needs, but many schools are unwilling to change longstanding practices in instruction, grading, and so on. If you want to attend, or would like your student to attend, a school that believes in changing the paradigm of education, send them to STEM.

How Do We Embed Process Skills in Everyday Teaching?

The answer is simple: be deliberate. We can't teach every skill, in every content, in every lesson, every single time. But, we can plan ahead to ensure that we are providing instruction, formative assessments, and feedback on those skills in our day to day interactions with students. Collaboration is a great example, since many schools highlight this particular skill as crucial. Oftentimes though the emphasis is simply on allowing students to do group work. How does that look different in 9th grade vs. 12th grade? Is there a progression of how students demonstrate their ability to work in a group? Or to resolve conflict? Or to hold themselves and each other accountable? Just putting them in groups, or letting them choose their own, is not an effective instructional strategy and it doesn't provide feedback or allow for self-reflection. In short, it doesn't explicitly teach collaboration, nor does it provide growth opportunities over time. So we have 2 challenges: 1.

Houses

I field a lot of questions on this topic, and most of them include the words "Harry Potter" in some regard. Those lovely books were in fact part of the inspiration for our House system . A group of students requested to implement a similar program here at STEM, based on Myers Briggs , which all of our students take upon entering in 9th grade. (You can take a quick version of that assessment here ). We use that tool to help the students with the transition from their previous schools to an entirely new peer group in the hopes that it will show students their similarities, and give a new frame of reference for their differences. We refer back to this in our development of PBL groups, in conflict resolution, in teaching the STEM tenets (Critical Thinking, Innovation, Collaboration) and frequently in the day to day. In terms of Houses, we refer to the 4 Myers Briggs temperaments for "sorting" students into 4 Houses, each of which are named after individuals in STEM