“You Too Can Solve Problems and Teach STEM”
\\I was inspired to create a presentation on teaching STEM as a result of training I had received from our local Regional Office of Education on one of our school improvement days. The purpose of the presentation was to try to encourage teachers to teach STEM and to jump-start their lessons with ideas. I sat quietly in the back, interested to hear what they had to say, but knowing that my prior career as an engineer probably gave me a lot more credentials to teach STEM than most any teacher. However, being an engineer didn't make me an educator, and I didn't want to intimidate anyone with my background. So I gave their presentation my attention, so as to gain ideas on how to teach STEM to pre-teens. The presenters were very encouraging regarding STEM, and there was one thing in particular that they said that I earnestly agreed with; that is that you don't need a lot of special tools, or laboratories, or equipment in order to teach this subject.
The presenters involved us in the process by giving us a challenge to solve. We had a small green army man, and at the far end of the library, there was a box with a generous opening. On our side of the library, there was a masking tape line. The challenge was simple, we could not cross the line, but we had to get the army man into the box, which was about 20 feet away. We are allowed to go to our classrooms and gather whatever materials we might like in order to assist us in completing this challenge. We were encouraged to use creativity in coming up with our designs. We had teachers attempting to make cars that they could roll across the space into the box, trying to zipline or parachute to their guy in, in fact, there were a lot of very creative attempts to help our green army man reach the objective. My solution, however, was very, very simple. I put the army guy at the end of a yardstick, and then I pushed that yardstick with another yardstick, and then I pushed that yardstick with a third yardstick, until I had used about 6 yardsticks and successfully united the army man with his destination.
I was very proud of myself, after all, I was the only teacher who manage to accomplish the goal. The presenter, however, was quite disappointed. “It wasn’t very creative,” he said, “the other designs were much more creative.” “Yeah, but it worked”, I replied. “Still,” the presenter held on, “it would have been better if it had been more creative.” I thought to myself, but it was creative, and it was simple, that’s why it worked.
I believe many people are put off by teaching STEM because they don’t believe they have the technological or mathematical or scientific knowledge required to come up with creative solutions to problems. That is a problem in and of itself. Because, if you think of the purpose of STEM, it is to solve problems. From an engineering standpoint, the simpler the solution is, the less likely something will go wrong. Creative means thinking about old problems in new ways and thinking about solutions that utilize tools we already have, but now use in a new way.
So, this presentation is designed to encourage teachers of all backgrounds that they too have the background required to teach STEM. It is titled, “You Too Can Solve Problems and Teach STEM”.
youtu.be/BiZjQnjDvS4