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How Do You STEM?

Most schools teach Science and Math, and employ technology, so what makes a STEM school any different? Many schools have added the engineering design process, in creative ways, to multiple content areas. Some people think of places with high tech offerings such as robotics or FabLabs or Maker Spaces with 3-D printers. Does all of this make a STEM School? 

While all of these are excellent examples of methods of engaging and teaching students, these elements don't stand alone to make a school. For STEM models to power a school, and to empower students, there needs to be an underlying structure, a belief system, processes by which content is given a purpose. At STEM School Chattanooga this is exemplified by the tenets "Collaboration, Critical Thinking, and Innovation." These skills are outlined not only in the school mission statement, but also by being the driving force behind all of the decisions that propel the school, and its amazing students, into the future. 

Schools utilizing STEM programming were created in an attempt to prepare students for an increasingly fast-paced and ever changing workforce. This is not so that students can create robots that will someday replace all human workers, though automation continues to rapidly progress. It is so that students can become learners, and eventually adults, who ADAPT. Stakeholders and industry partners have told schools, and me, over and over again that it does not matter what knowledge graduates come pre-equipped with, it matters to them what skills they come equipped with. They can and do teach the rest. This is not to say that our students don't need literacy and numeracy skills, or that they don't require a depth and breadth of content knowledge. Instead it means that process skills such as collaboration and critical thinking breath life into content. So too do they give meaning and value to the purpose of STEM, and all its bells and whistles.

The question remains then, not HOW do you STEM, but how do YOU STEM?

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