A STEM Teacher’s Reflections
The emotions I felt these past years few as a STEM teacher have been so much like a roller coaster. I’ve felt invigorated, excited, free, inspired, and challenged as a STEM teacher in so many ways that I hadn’t experienced in my previous teaching assignments. Going in I knew I was going to experience something that was so new that I would be forced to get out of my comfort teaching “styles.” I invited it. I was always that passionate teacher that wanted to do more pbl projects that were interdisciplinary, and when I was given the opportunity to teach STEM full-time, I jumped for joy!
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Fresh-faced on the first day of class as a STEM Teacher |
What I didn’t expect was to be challenged to my core in learning new concepts, learning how to adapt to being a traveling teacher without a physical classroom, and working with a close team of teachers. It’s three years later, and I wanted to reflect on my biggest takeaways!
Teaching Robotics in Elementary Isn’t Easy
I didn’t have a robotics class growing up. Did you? It was a whole new world, and the only thing that I was exposed to that was even remotely similar was coding basics in college. I could see myself getting overwhelmed every time I have introduced a new task to the students. It didn’t feel natural to hand something off to the students when I wasn’t entirely sure about it.
I was entirely encouraged throughout this process because my students were always more naturally keen to understand the concepts faster and easier than I was.
After thinking some more, I realized that I had allowed my negative perception of how difficult this topic was for me to make me think that my students would also find it just as difficult. I was pleasantly surprised when my assumptions were laid to rest. Little by little, I learned with them. I learned to troubleshoot the robot brains, how to spot imperfections in how students put the pieces together, and how all of the pieces fit together like a puzzle. This new world of robotics was no longer feeling foreign.
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| 2 necessary components for working with robotics- vex pieces and a tablet to build with instructions and to code the robot |
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In the process of building the Chassis robot
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STEM Teachers As a Facilitator
Student Collaborative Groups Take Work.
The majority of STEM lessons and activities involve students working in groups to accomplish tasks and problem-solving. This might sound awesome, but it is definitely not all rainbows and butterflies. When our group of STEM teachers started, we all exchanged horror stories of how we split students up into groups, and there were hoards of students complaining, nagging, and downright being unresponsive because they didn’t want to work with people.
This worried me because if my kids couldn’t work in groups, then the entire year would be a failure. With some very strategic planning, some of us teachers got together to think about team-building activities we could teach before we introduced their “teams.” Some of us did spaghetti-building challenges, some of us did index paper towers, and there is no end to the fun stem activities that could unite students. The kids had a blast. It got them working with new people and seeing how every person on the team has to participate in order to get the task complete.
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| STEM challenge: build the most stable structure that could hold homeless people during an earthquake. |
Although this hard work paid off in the end, working through it in the middle of the year was rough. I’m so glad that our students will be in their second year of STEM classes, so they should already know what will be expected of them.
Letting Go of the Being the Teacher With the Cute Classroom
This one was almost the most difficult thing all year. I didn’t have a classroom. I moved from school to school depending on the day, and I also traveled from class to class at each school. I loved the movement and flexibility I had, but I absolutely hated that I didn’t have my own classroom to decorate. I kept imagining all of the cute bulletin boards I would be created based on what the students were learning. I don’t know if going back to the classroom is ever in my future, but I do wish that some of the homeroom teachers will allow me to get some bulletin board space in the room. I know just how hard those are to come by!
Even if I don’t decorate any classrooms, I’m going to ask some principals if I could take up space on some of the outdoor bulletin boards that go by untouched and overlooked. Why waste a good bulletin board space? Am I right?!
Stem Teachers are Practically Celebrities
I’m glad I have something positive to say about this past year. It’s funny because whenever I think back on my year I remember the students’ excitement when they saw me walk into their classroom, their amazement when the robots started moving, their sweet notes thanking me for being their STEM teacher, being told countless times that if I didn’t teach them about energy, robotics, coding, then they wouldn’t be getting it at all.
That’s what it’s all about. I know it sounds super cheesy, but all the other challenging things just go to the wayside when I remember just how much my students learned about working in collaborative groups, using technology to create, learn about inputs and outputs, and getting a newfound enthusiasm for STEM.
It helped that we felt like celebrities when we walked down the hallway and our students saw us. They would whisper to one another that the STEM teachers were here today. That was the sweetest moment.