Tips for STEM Teachers

If you are teaching STEM-related courses, congratulations because you are trailblazing a generation of engineers and technology experts. This is an opportunity to be at the forefront of something that could potentially shake up the job market in the years to come.

If you are looking for encouragement and advice, here are some tips that should help anyone who teaches a STEM-related course.

1. Integrate All Four STEM Subjects

As stated earlier, STEM combines four subjects: Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics. As a STEM teacher, you should familiarize yourself with all these subjects and be ready to integrate them into your teaching methods. As a result, the students will get real-world, meaningful learning. 

As a STEM educator, you help your students apply what they learn to real-life situations. You can do that by setting up practical lessons where their knowledge is tested, and they have to use what they have learned to solve real-life problems.

This should help them develop thinking, investigative, reasoning, and creative skills that should come in handy in this modern and technology-oriented world.

2. Have a Good STEM Curriculum

It can be relatively hard to find a STEM curriculum that has been set out by the relevant educational authorities, particularly because it doesn’t exist. However, several sites have put up agood and reliable STEM lesson guides.

One of the most popular and highly recommended ones is eFGI for Teachers. Here, you will find a variety of tools to boost your students’ math and science skills, as well as ideas on how to enliven the classroom with engineering projects.

They have lesson plans, class activities, outreach programs, and also web resources, among a host of other things that could guide you to make your STEM lessons as interactive and educative as possible.

Another site that offers good and reliable lesson guides is TeachEngineering. However, you must be cautious in the STEM teaching guides you use because not every guide that claims to be a STEM guide is actually a STEM guide.

Here are a few things you can use to determine if the guide is suited for STEM lessons.

A good STEM lesson is guided by the seven-step engineering design process in solving problems:

Focuses on real-world problems.

Provides for multiple right answers and reiterates the importance of failure as a part of learning.

Involves students in productive teamwork.

Teaches students to access reliability of information.

Helps students to develop critical thinking and ability to analyze data.

Applies rigorous math and science content.

Immerses students in hands-on inquiry and open-ended exploration.

Supports a teaching process that is mainly student-centered and inquiry-based.

Requires students to tap into their design skills and create a prototype of the solutions.

Using this checklist, you can now know which online teaching curriculum is good enough for you to use and can include in your STEM teacher preparation.

Read more here: Seven STEM Teacher Tips If You’re Suddenly Teaching STEM (msn.com); Resources for STEM Teachers

STEM Education in Christian Schools

Girls from Wheaton Christian Grammar School in Winfield, Illinois have been attending STEM events at Argonne National Laboratory. This was organized in cooperation with the DuPage Regional Office of Education STEM Team. The girls and their mothers listened to presentations by women involved in STEM professions, participated in an interactive design activity, and observed a science demonstration.

A successful STEM education provides students with science, math, and engineering/technology in sequences that build upon each other and can be used with real-world applications. STEM education creates critical thinkers, increases science literacy, and enables the next generation of innovators to create new products and processes that sustain our economy.

Most jobs of the future will require math and science and the fastest growing occupations require significant mathematics or science preparation.

Wheaton Christian Grammar School is committed to providing learning experiences that integrate science, technology, engineering, and math so that the students can serve the world for God’s glory. WCGS in Illinois and King's Ridge in Georgia are among a growing number of Christian schools committed to STEM education.

Related reading: Technology-STEM Curriculum for Christian Schools; King's Ridge Christian School Hosts STEM Event; Valley Christian School Committed to STEM Education

Christian Schools Committed to STEM

One gets the impression that Christian schools are far behind public and secular private schools when it comes to stimulating interest in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM). Here is a Christian School that is bucking that trend. Valley Christian School has its main campus in Cerritos, California.

The Nation’s science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) workforce is crucial to America’s innovative capacity and global competitiveness. Yet women are vastly underrepresented in STEM jobs and among STEM degree holders despite making up nearly half of the U.S. workforce and half of the college-educated workforce.

That leaves an untapped opportunity to expand STEM employment in the United States, even as there is wide agreement that the nation must do more to improve its competitiveness.

• Although women fill close to half of all jobs in the U.S. economy, they hold less than 25 percent of STEM jobs. This has been the case throughout the past decade, even as college-educated women have increased their share of the overall workforce.

• Women with STEM jobs earned 33 percent more than comparable women in non-STEM jobs – considerably higher than the STEM premium for men. As a result, the gender wage gap is smaller in STEM jobs than in non-STEM jobs.

• Women hold a disproportionately low share of STEM undergraduate degrees, particularly in engineering.

• Women with a STEM degree are less likely than their male counterparts to work in a STEM occupation; they are more likely to work in education or healthcare.

There are many possible factors contributing to the discrepancy of women and men in STEM jobs, including: a lack of female role models, gender stereotyping, and less family-friendly flexibility in the STEM fields. Regardless of the causes, the findings of this report provide evidence of a need to encourage and support women in STEM.

At Valley Christian School, we are committed to stimulating and nurturing all of our student’s interests in STEM education. More than just an academic requirement, VCS is committed to several programs that are designed to develop a passion in our students for STEM….from Science Camps and Robotic Camps to partnerships with NASA. Parents such as Greg Campbell, Paul and Ginger De Vries, John Ward and Barbara Sarmiento are just a few who help out in these areas. Faculty like John Tiersma and Pamela Leestma, and many more, are developing visionary programs.

From here.

Here is some recent news that proves the school's commitment to Science and Technology:

Valley Christian STEMWorks kicked off the 2014 First Robotics Competition season at the VCHS chapel on Saturday, January 4. A sizable crowd of approximately 90 attendees, including 21 members of EPIC Robotz team 4415 were present. This is Valley Christian’s 3rd year with high school robotics, the first year solely as a VCS team.

For this year’s challenge called “Areal Assist,” the robot will be designed to move and throw a 30-inch ball from one robot to another, then pass through a rectangular hole 12 feet above the ground. The mentors and team members have 6 weeks to design, build, and test their creation as they prepare for the March 20-22 competition at the Long Beach Convention Center. The team will also complete a business component to create web sites, produce animations, marketing, pit design, and acquire data for a business intelligence application.

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