Email: Helping STEM Grow

Helping STEM Grow
	One of the endless parade of edu-acronyms is STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics), otherwise known as “stuff with numbers”. Everyone agrees that STEM is important; almost no one has figured out how to help more kids do better at it. One person making a difference on that front is U of M professor Gillian Roehrig.

Roehrig, the focus of a recent MinnPost profile that you should read in full if you haven't yet done so, has put a lot of energy into STEM education at the 10,000-foot level (she helped develop Minnesota's science standards) and at ground level (she's helped develop and implement summer science programs for kids on the White Earth reservation in northwestern Minnesota).

A strong believer in cross-pollinating STEM concepts between classes, Roehrig has also done exemplary work involving communities in the advancement of STEM education that's more meaningful to kids. Much of traditional science and math education was developed by science and math enthusiasts for science and math enthusiasts. Now that we're trying to expand STEM's appeal beyond its historical demographic, we need to consider a blend of traditional and newer routes to learning.

At White Earth, Roehrig spent time becoming familiar with the community before jumping in to push the new science programming. She involved community leaders in the creation and delivery of key concepts and framed those concepts around experiences that would be familiar to kids.

This isn't just touchy-feely pablum, however. MinnPost quotes Roehrig as saying, “Fun can overtake the learning if you are not careful.... You've got to make sure [kids] know why they are doing what they are doing.”

A strong focus on context-based, experiential learning around a solid core of interdisciplinary content is rare and significant. We would all do well to remember the amount of hard work and local awareness it takes to develop a truly effective approach to learning. At the end of the day, education is about more than federal, state, or local policies. It's about good educators working hard to do right by their students. It's worth taking some time to celebrate when that happens.

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