Area Conference in New Orleans

Humans have impacted the physical environment in many ways: overpopulation, pollution, burning fossil fuels, and deforestation. As a result, locations around the world face ongoing threats such as extreme weather, invasive species, and land loss. In order to mitigate these processes, teachers must be prepared to teach sustainable practices and help students make connections between their actions and future impacts to the planet. This also means educating and collaborating with responsible partners and stakeholders (shareholders) who impact local environments. Teachers must develop and facilitate learning opportunities that enhance students' understanding of how to not only restore our planet, but also ensure its resiliency in the face of future events. In this strand, participants will learn how all domains of STEM work together to help save our planet.

"Promoting scientific literacy among all of the nation’s people is a democratic ideal worthy of focused attention, significant resources, and continuing effort." (Framework; NRC 2012, p. 277) Scientific literacy allows individuals to be critical consumers and contributors of scientific knowledge. All students need explicit instruction in and opportunities to engage with scientific information in order to demonstrate their ability to use, think about, interpret, and communicate their understanding of science. In this strand, participants will construct knowledge about the literacy practices, the shared language, and the tools that scientists and engineers use to acquire and communicate knowledge alongside their peers.

Teachers should engage all students in meaningful discourse with their peers—similar to the work of scientists and engineers—as they make sense of natural phenomena or design solutions to problems. PreK–16 instruction should emphasize the applications of science and engineering to all career fields, including technical and vocational, both in theory and in practice. In this strand, participants will strengthen their understanding of how the science and engineering practices (SEPs)—doing of science; disciplinary core ideas (DCIs)—knowledge; and crosscutting concepts (CCCs)—connecting work together to help students investigate, explain, and analyze phenomena.