STEM Education 101

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In my own experiences both in the classroom and in my Stevenson courses, it’s clear that STEM education holds a high importance in today’s society. STEM education is the integration of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics and with science and technology playing big roles in the world, we want to provide students with 21st century skills to advance and succeed. STEM should be implemented as early as elementary school and should be continued throughout high school. The timing is crucial for students to develop and improve their problem solving and critical thinking skills. By introducing STEM early on, students are able to have hands on experiences and those kinds of experiences help solidify foundational knowledge and have a lasting impact. I also think it is important for STEM and other disciplines like Language Arts to work together to ensure students are well rounded in their education. The skills a student can learn in a humanities based course like active reading strategies and vocabulary building can also benefit STEM education. While each discipline is its own entity, students should have a well-rounded education.

STEM education helps create innovators and allows students to collaborate with each other. STEM also welcomes curiosity and that is what helps lead to advancements in the world. On top of that, the skills that are cultivated in STEM education is what employers look for. Our job as educators isn’t just to teach students the content, but to also provide them with skills to be successful in life. Right now, there’s a deficit in STEM professionals especially with females in STEM. There are also not enough qualified STEM teachers and that is part of the problem with STEM education. More awareness is needed to improve STEM education resources along with bringing more awareness with STEM related fields.

Overall, STEM education allows students to be in the mindset of thinking creatively and persisting through challenging problems. STEM education allows for hands on experience with the experiential aspect of learning and these types of situations promote student engagement. I believe STEM education needs to be implemented in elementary school and continued throughout high school to develop those sought after skills that employers look for. By having students exposed at a younger age, there is more time to induce interest in STEM. As technology evolves and moves forward, it’s crucial to keep STEM learning in a positive light. Our society relies on STEM and without it, we wouldn’t be where we are today.

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