Welcome to my little corner of the internet, it is great to have you here!
Introduction
I have a lot of things I am passionate about history, teaching, reading, gardening, my family, camping, making things, traveling, technology, coding, robotics, web design, baking, and STEM. That’s quite a list, right? But how did I become a STEM/STEAM and social studies teacher? Some are confused by my domain and the STEM content they find here. Some don’t see how they have anything in common, but they do… in me and my love of STEM/STEAM and Social Studies education.
How did I become a STEM/STEAM and social studies teacher?
I have been teaching for almost twenty years now. My first love was social studies. I love learning about cultures, our past, geography, and how we ended up here. I was the kid who asked why a million times a day, and honestly, I haven’t stopped. My second love was science. I love to know how and why things work the way they do. I almost double-majored in science in college, but I couldn’t pass the math classes. Even when I got tutoring and tried really hard, but I just couldn’t seem to get the hang of math at that speed. I did well in calc and trig in high school, so it shouldn’t have been such an insurmountable issue, but my dreams died in that college math course. But I am getting a bit off topic, huh? When I found STEM education, I was thrilled to see an opportunity for me to marry together the loves of my life, into a hands-on, vibrant classroom experience for my students (and me to be honest. because I figure, if I love coming to work, they will love being in school.)
Why do I love Integrated STEM/STEAM so much?
I get to take my love of geography, history, and cultures and combine it with the hows and whys. We can take a deeper look into why they did that, what influenced them, and what they might have been experiencing and thinking. On the flip side, I get to show them the humanity behind science. The whys behind their endless quest for answers. It is a beautiful mix. On top of all that, we get to play with robots (Yes, we are meeting standards and learning life skills and “21st century skills” and all of that official stuff; but we are having fun and playing at the same time. Hello, positive work and learning environment!) I drink coffee, chat with students, and watch them make discoveries on their own (and together with partners… I mean 4C’s, right?). This is a topic near and dear to my heart, and I can talk about STEM/STEAM education for hours and never get tired of it, or run out of deep and meaningful stuff to say (I mean some of it HAS to be meaningful, right?).
Math in Action!
How did I get to Social Studies and STEM/STEAM education? One thing I figured out in high school was that I learned math better, when I was able to apply it immediately. My math teacher was amazing. I can still see her standing in the front of the room; picture her hair, nails, the sound the chalk made on the blackboard, the posters on the wall, and even my exact seat. We learned a lot of math in that classroom. To be clear, I had the same lovely woman for math from Algebra to Calculus. I really struggled with Trig, turns out I am a bit dyslexic. But calculus came alive, when I got to take it at the same time I took physics. Suddenly math was no longer something I had to do to get honor roll (anyone else get money for A’s?) and became the vehicle for science. I got to see the math in action, see it helping me design better ramps for my remote control cars, and prove why seatbelts are a good thing. It became a magical tool that I had never really seen this way before. I had used it to figure out sale prices and how much paint I needed for my bedroom, but I had never predicted the outcomes of experiments before. It was amazing! You know, until that glorious day in college when I got to drop that math class.
Integrating STEM/STEAM and Social Studies
I finished college with my degrees in history and Secondary education and longingly waved goodbye to my dream of science. My dream job teaching social studies full time for a school near my home appeared in my life, and I couldn’t imagine life getting any better. I was thrilled! In December, a fellow teacher (biology teacher nonetheless) approached me to become part of a STEM team. Apparently, I would be the T in STEM, because I am a giant geek.
Where my geeks at?
That love of computers started in 1993 when we were able to purchase a Compaq desktop computer. I tried to install Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego (9 3.5 floppies worth of Broderbund goodness) and it wouldn’t install. The GUI was in the way, so several hours with tech support in California later (holy phone bill!), we ended up trading her in for an IBM Aptiva. (Do you remember the commercials where she talked to you? I was so excited to have the cool talking computer. Spoiler alert, they didn’t actually talk to you. *sigh*) We hooked up to AOL (you heard the dial up tone and “you’ve got mail”, didn’t you?), and off we went. (PS we would soon learn that all the AOL numbers were also long distance.) I tore the IBM apart to add more RAM, and was head over heels in love. This began a pathway of loving tech, coding, web design… Wow, I got off track.
Learning to integrate STEM/STEAM in my classroom
So I would be the T in the STEM team. We had a physics teacher, a biology teacher, a math teacher, and me the social studies teacher and IT department. These gentlemen had lots of other life experiences, so those titles are for simplicity. We began our adventure in South Bend Indiana at the University of Notre Dame, and over three years were trained in the Trustey Family STEM Teaching Fellows program. (https://stemeducation.nd.edu/trustey look it up, it is incredible!). Here I learned that I could integrate STEM into my social studies classroom and have the best of both worlds. I could reach those artsy students, the math lovers and science lovers, the music kids… I was finally able to merge the loves of my life into one classroom, and I haven’t looked back!
Check out my blog post on why STEM/STEAM is richer when it is taught in a Co-Teaching environment here.
