Examine your building, schedule, supplies, and technology situation. Know the community your students come from and what skills they will need – social and academic.
#Stem program how to#
Do all involved know their role, and are they equipped to fill it? Are teachers motivated and prepared to implement STEM? Do they know how to work in teams with other adults, manage student teams, and work with open ended teaching approaches?
Know thyself.ĭo an up-front assessment of schools and systems where you will roll this out. Then, when you know the why and what, think about the how. Put a lot of time, energy, and effort into the planning.
#Stem program full#
How will it be funded and managed during implementation? Heads up! If you are doing a rollout for a large school system, it will take a full time, knowledgeable person to pull this off and facilitate it. Keep in mind that a simple plan is easier to sustain than a complicated one.
How will your STEM program be sustained over the long term? How will you get plenty of buy-in so that this isn’t a one-person show? Get some solid, grass-roots support in place before you roll out your STEM program. We decided that an integrated STEM approach built around an engineering problem-solving process would best suit our students’ needs and would provide our industries with the workforce they needed. When you reach clarity on why you want to implement STEM, develop clarity around what kind of STEM program works best for the need you identified. Our area industries were needing a different type of graduate – able to think critically, work in teams, and apply math and science to solve problems.
We designed and implemented it in response to needs of industries in the Mobile area, such as aerospace and shipbuilding. Our STEM program began as a K-12 workforce initiative. The why depends on where your need is coming from: Your community? Your student population? The business sector? The call to raise math and science scores? Because you believe all kids should have 21st Century skills? ► Develop clarity around why you want to do STEM and what your STEM program needs to look like. We gathered a diverse team that included teachers, administrators, business leaders, community leaders, varied ethnicities, and outside folks with knowledge and experience. Make sure you pull the right people together to figure things out. ► Use a team approach, even in the thinking and planning stages. Some administrators, engineers, & teachers learning & planning for STEM We allotted one full year for careful, thorough planning. Setting aside enough time for meticulous planning is hard to do, and this part of the initiative is often short-circuited. Consider these ideas for your planning process: Careful planning is key here – in fact, comprehensive planning is vital to successful STEM initiatives. In fact, as you delve into it, it can appear overwhelming. Great STEM Learning: Seven Tips to Get You Startedĭesigning a STEM program is a huge learning curve for a school or system. Here are 7 tips Susan thinks you should know up front. In this guest blog post, Susan passes along some of her wisdom on how to design and implement a successful, sustainable STEM program. And she is masterful at joining hands with teachers, administrators, and community & business leaders to make it happen. Susan – best described as a high-energy dynamo – has a talent and a well-designed process for establishing successful STEM reform initiatives. I was fortunate enough to work with Susan as she developed and directed two remarkably successful NSF-funded school reform efforts involving STEM education: the Maysville/Mobile Math Initiative and, more recently, the middle grades program Engaging Youth through Engineering. This week I’d like you to meet top-notch STEM program developer Dr.
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