We're excited to launch our newest blog series, Teacher Talk: Educators In Their Own Words! Here, you can find interviews with many trusted educators, from elementary school through college. They’ll share their classroom practices, what motivates them, and how they incorporate STEAM solutions into learning. We believe it's important to hear directly from teachers, since our priority is putting forward tools that they can easily and effectively incorporate into the classroom. We see and appreciate the educators who work hard to enhance learning through STEAM tools and other creative methods. And, we hope that these interviews will inspire and motivate fellow educators. Above all, we love serving the education community, so it’s important to us to hear from educators. If you want to share your story, please reach out to our Content Associate, Kara Applegate, to schedule a Zoom or phone interview.
Whether it's advancing STEM opportunities, striving for greater equity in learning, or focusing on soft skills development, every educator has different strengths and different instructional elements they're passionate about. In this regular series, we'll do our best to cover all of these evolving angles. From justifying technology use in early education to promoting career readiness, these insights are trustworthy and directly from the source. As always, we'd encourage any educator to reach out if they would like to share their insights, stories, or experiences. We would also love it if you shared this opportunity throughout any PLN you're part of. Together, we're excited to continue serving the education community. And, we look forward to sharing new insights to help educators reach and engage students across grade levels and subjects.
The versatility of maker education means students get more opportunities to choose how they learn best. For neurodivergent kids, underrepresented students, and others, MakerEd projects can improve engagement, agency, and retention. Makerspace director, Nicholas Provenzano, known as “The Nerdy Teacher,” shares benefits of those projects in this Teacher Talk post.
The skills kids acquire through hands-on STEM activities can help prepare them to show resilience or emotional intelligence when they face adversity as well as helping them learn to navigate modern-day challenges. Dr. Pam Davis founded pop-up makerspace company, Wellbotics, and learned this early on. Here, she talks SEL, social justice, embodied learning, and more.
Through project-based learning, children get to see concepts in action and build up a bigger variety of vital SEL skills like teamwork and responsibility. Science teacher Jeremy Jorgensen knows all about these benefits. For this new Teacher Talk feature, we discussed how he incorporates PBL activities in the classroom and the skills kids develop from hands-on experiences.
In afterschool programs, educators enjoy more freedom to introduce ideas they might not have time to work into a regular lesson plan. For our newest Teacher Talk, I chatted with Mallory Davis, a curriculum director who works with afterschool programs. We had a wonderful conversation about how to integrate STEAM and SEL and the benefits of afterschool STEM education.
We’re kicking off our new Teacher Talk blog series by sharing this interview with Lisa Blais, a fifth grade science and math teacher in the Boston Public School system. Lisa has plenty of awesome insights on the accessibility of STEAM education, how she enhances activities she uses in her classroom, and how learning in the science subjects can help kids
