This week in education news, new project looks to promote family math; California schools are making progress in implementing environmental education standards; study finds that the U.S. not doing enough to prepare students for the automation age; growing STEM skills gap is causing the outsourcing of high-paying technical jobs; teacher pay is so low that some school districts are now recruiting overseas; and President Trump honors the nation’s top teachers.

Stop Using The Word ‘Nerd’ – The Future Of Science May Depend On It

My Forbes articles are inspired by many different things. This one was inspired by browsing social media and seeing that my colleague Brian McNoldy had posted a really neat analysis of near-surface ocean winds from NASA’s Cyclone Global Navigation Satellite System (CYGNSS). It is a mission that could improve our understanding of hurricanes. What caught my eye is that one of his friends playfully commented, “Nerd.” In that instance, it was certainly light-hearted banter between friends. However, it made me reflect on my own personal observations, and how such terms may impact kids’ desire to purse STEM. Read the article featured in Forbes magazine.

Parents Read To Their Kids. Why Not Do Math Together? New Project Looks To Promote Family Math — And Help Close The Achievement Gap

“I’m just not a math person.” We’ve all heard that phrase from friends, family, or colleagues. Though usually presented as a harmless personality quirk, it conceals math anxiety, insecurity, and potentially a belief that math isn’t as valuable as other areas of study. This has real implications: Research shows that merely expressing math anxiety can damage math performance. Read the article featured in The 74.

California Schools Getting A Little Greener As Environmental Education Standards Roll Out

As Californians celebrate Earth Day and the ecology movement over the past month, the state’s public schools are making steady progress in implementing some of the most comprehensive environmental education standards in the country, educators and environmentalists say. Buoyed by $4 million in the current state budget for K-12 environmental education, teachers are planning field trips to mountains and beaches, creating lessons on ecosystems and watersheds and showing students how human activity affects the planet. In April, thousands of students turned out for Earth Day events, picking up trash, pulling weeds and planting trees. Read the article featured in EdSource.

Study: The U.S. Isn’t Doing Enough To Prepare Students For The Automation Age

The United States is lagging behind other wealthy nations when it comes to preparing students for workforce changes wrought by automation, according to a new study by a research group affiliated with The Economist magazine. Read the article featured in The Hechinger Report.

The STEM Crisis: What The Growing Skills Gap Means For The Economy And Where We Go From Here

Our government wants businesses to stop outsourcing. It creates incentives to encourage the hiring of American workers. It implements policies to keep jobs and factories here in the U.S. And while these measures are all well-meaning, none of them ultimately tackle what is the greatest threat to our nation’s long-term economic prosperity—the technical skills gap in our workforce. Couple that with restrictions on immigration, and particularly H1-Bs, and we’re on the brink of a talent vacuum here in the U.S. Read the article featured in The Hill.

Teacher Pay Is So Low In Some U.S. School Districts That They’re Recruiting Overseas

The latest wave of foreign workers sweeping into American jobs brought Donato Soberano from the Philippines to Arizona two years ago. He had to pay thousands of dollars to a job broker and lived for a time in an apartment with five other Filipino workers. The lure is the pay — 10 times more than what he made doing the same work back home. But Mr. Soberano is not a hospitality worker or a home health aide. He is in another line of work that increasingly pays too little to attract enough Americans: Mr. Soberano is a public school teacher. Read the article featured in The New York Times.

3D Printers Weave Art, Science To Harness Students’ Imaginations

From chess figures to architectural models, something is always cooking inside Adam Gebhardt’s classroom at Jefferson Elementary School in Jefferson Hills, Penn., where a LulzBot 3D printer whirls away making models designed by his 5th-grade students. As the school’s art teacher, Gebhardt started experimenting with 3D printers, where students now create objects for the chess club as well as complete their class assignments. He sees 3D printing as a way to help students build not only models, but new skills that they’ll use in their education — and, potentially, in a future career. Read the article featured in Education DIVE.

‘There Is No More Important Job’: Trump Meets With Nation’s Top Teachers

President Donald Trump thanked teachers for their dedication in a short speech in the historic East Room of the White House on Wednesday. He was speaking to a crowd of renowned teachers and their family members. The teachers had all received their state’s highest honor in 2018. The National Teacher of the Year, Mandy Manning, stood behind Trump as he delivered his remarks. Read the article featured in Education Week.

School Supports For Teachers’ Implementation Of State Standards

In the past decade, most states have adopted college and career readiness standards that are more rigorous than previous standards, and most of those standards are closely aligned with key tenets of the Common Core State Standards. Although researchers know something about teachers’ perspectives and implementation of newer state standards, they know less about how schools support teachers’ implementation of state standards. This report examines two key school supports that could help teachers address state standards in their instruction: curriculum requirements and school leader knowledge of standards. Read the brief by the RAND Corporation.

Stay tuned for next week’s top education news stories.

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Arguably, one of the biggest education stories of 2018 has been the protests over low teacher pay. Since late February, thousands of teachers have organized strikes in West Virginia, Oklahoma, Kentucky, Colorado, and Arizona—all states that pay teachers far less than the national average salary.

Here’s a brief overview and a compendium of some great articles that take a look at the education labor movements emerging across the country.

From Oklahoma, POLITICO’s Caitlin Emma in her April 12 article Teachers Are Going on Strike in Trump’s America writes  “While West Virginia teachers were still on the picket lines, Morejon decided it was time for his state to follow suit. He created a Facebook group called, “Oklahoma Teacher Walkout—The Time Is Now!” In just three days, the group swelled to 30,000 members. On March 8, the union laid out a list of demands—like a $10,000 raise for teachers and $200 million to make up for education funding cuts—threatening a massive school walkout on April 2 if they weren’t met. On March 31, the Legislature approved a $6,100 raise, but it wasn’t enough and the walkout was called.”

Learn more about Teacher Pay and How Salaries, Pensions, and Benefits Work in Schools, before opening this article where the headline (No, Teachers are Not Underpaid) says it all and boldly claims that “Across-the-board salary increases, such as those enacted in Arizona, West Virginia, and Kentucky, are the wrong solution to a non-problem.”

In this corner, The New York Times take on how the Teachers Revolt Spreads to Arizona says there are “several interrelated factors behind the teachers’ movement’s explosive growth. Most significant, of course, is that teachers in some red states feel backed into a corner after a decade or more of disinvestment by Republican governments. Because of a series of tax cuts, particularly over the last 10 years, Arizona teachers are among the worst paid in the nation, and they have some of the country’s largest class sizes — up to 40 students to a single teacher.”

It takes two-thirds of the state legislature in Arizona to impose new taxes or increase taxes and in Oklahoma, it takes 75 percent of the state legislature to make a tax change. Read more here.

The Sacramento Bee article Pension problems help drive US protests for teacher raises  suggests “the recent outcry over teacher pay could spread in coming years, whether pension costs are widely acknowledged as a driving factor or not.”

Read more about the #redoned movement and budget package that passed in Arizona here and here.

Will North Carolina teachers be the next to strike in this era of “Teacher Spring?” In this Washington Post article North Carolina teacher Justin Parmenter explains “Since taking over state government in 2010, Republican lawmakers in our state have ushered in a jaw-dropping decline in the quality of teacher working conditions and student learning conditions.”

Jodi Peterson is the Assistant Executive Director of Communication, Legislative & Public Affairs for the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) and Chair of the STEM Education Coalition. Reach her via e-mail at jpeterson@nsta.org or via Twitter at @stemedadvocate.

The mission of NSTA is to promote excellence and innovation in science teaching and learning for all.

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What do you think of the value of extended field trips? What should be considered?
– M., Florida

I love field trips and students often say that they are the highlights of school! Whether it is extended or just a single day, going outside the school gives students a chance to observe or experience things much better than videos or text. You also introduce them to enthusiastic professionals and role-models. However, I always made sure that field trips weren’t just walking around with our hands in our pockets.

Scout out what the field trip is all about and look for hands-on and authentic experiences. Most places will allow teachers to tour their facilities and check things out with no cost. Don’t be afraid to ask for modifications to suit your class – you are the customer and you know what your students need! I always made sure that a field trip wasn’t a completely isolated event. So, I recommend planning some preparatory and follow up activities. Make sure that your field trip fits your curriculum.

There are several things to consider on extended field trips: travel, time and cost. Ask yourself if you can do the same activities in your classroom for less? Can you borrow equipment or have outside people come to your class and run activities? Can you manage taking students out yourself?

I’d also ask the students for their feedback after a field trip. I often passed their comments on to whomever we visited or used the information to make changes myself.

Hope this helps!

Photo Credit: USembassy via Wikimedia Commons

The easy answer to this question is “it depends.” It depends on the reason for providing the experience and the particular materials for young children to use. Of course children often set up their own tinkering experiences using materials at hand and may or may not have a goal in mind. I want all children to have these kinds of open-ended experiences, yes and, also have some guided making experiences to learn about construction techniques they might not discover on their own.

C. Heroman, Webinar: Making and Tinkering with STEM

The National Association for the Education of Young Children’s social media site, “Hello,” has a discussion on the topic of tinkering moderated by Cate Heroman, author of Making and Tinkering with STEM: Solving Design Challenges with Young Children.  Heroman also presented a webinar on the topic.  She adapts the Boston Children’s Museum’s definitions of “tinkering,” “making,” and “engineering.”

The Boston Children’s Museum and the National Grid Massachusetts produced a Tinker Kit: Educators’ Guide  to “inspire you to use everyday materials—scissors, paper, egg cartons, pipe cleaners—to help young children develop the muscles in their hands, practice their fine motor skills, and explore materials to understand how they work.”

The “Making Is Fun but Are They Learning?” video from the research-practice partnership, the California Tinkering Afterschool Network (CTAN), provides guidance on preparing to teach or facilitate children’s making. “Maker educators and facilitators need hands-on opportunities to try and learn through the same making activities that they will later facilitate with young learners. Professional development for making should involve:

• Engaging in discussions about equity
• providing first-hand experiences with Making
• Exploring how to develop a culture of inquiry
• Positioning students as experts, mentors, and coaches”

Read the comment section with responses from Bronwyn Bevan and other presenters for more insight about how Making can support children’s STEM learning and help educators allow “youth to struggle through their questions and come to their own (and therefore owned) understanding.” The youth involved with CTAN were older than the early childhood years but the insights apply to educators working with younger children.

“They are driven to become fluent with STEM concepts and practices in order to succeed in what they themselves want to do.”

“Particularly for educators without formal STEM backgrounds, there is a danger that getting the product “right” and “done” can take precedence over allowing youth to struggle through their questions and come to their own (and therefore owned) understanding. Or in the context of Making, that educators might adopt a step-by-step building approach in which nothing really can go wrong. Everybody gets the same thing right and done at the same time; and so learning is somewhat limited. (We think by the way that there is a place for such step-by-step activities, but as stepping stones for more ambitious, creative, and open-ended work.)” 

The Making as a Strategy for Afterschool STEM Learning Report from CTAN Research-Practice Partnership describes tinkering as “educative Making…organized around Open-Ended Inquiry—learners develop an individual idea or goal for making  something and figure out how to accomplish it.” The report says that tinkering “can provide a concrete purpose and relevance for engaging in STEM concepts and practices” (page 1).  

Some additional resources from the California Tinkering Afterschool Network (CTAN) to reflect on as you consider the way you include or plan to include tinkering as part of your educational practice: 

• Equity in Afterschool Resources section 
• “Tinkering as the Context for Equity-Oriented STEM Learning” video and accompanying blog post, Learning and Equity: Tinkering Afterschool Program, about the Tinkering Afterschool Program collaboration between the Exploratorium and Boys & Girls Clubs of San Francisco.

In case you haven’t gotten to it yet, the entire March 2018 issue of Science and Children focused on making. I wrote about honoring children’s capacity to engage in science and engineering practices and design solutions for problems by promoting open-ended making of solutions that arise out of their own experiences.

If you want to get experience tinkering yourself, consider signing up for the Coursera course, “Tinkering Fundamentals: Motion and Mechanisms” by Exploratorium at coursera.org 

How beneficial and effective can inquiry-based learning be at the younger elementary school grades (K-2)? What are some ideas for incorporating this type of learning at this level?
—K., Wyoming

I would argue the only way to teach science to our youngest students is through inquiry! 

Humans were born with innate curiosity and a willingness to experiment. Why not tap into those built-in characteristics and provide students the opportunity to observe, experiment and reach conclusions on topics of their choice?

Make science hands-on and judiciously guide students with questions. Have them record data in interesting ways that include counting, measuring, representing values with icons or pictures, and use language. Don’t underestimate a child’s ability to observe: when he was kindergarten-aged, my son asked me, “Why do sunrises look like rainbows?” I was about to answer that they don’t, but then looked out the window to observe…the full spectrum of colors! Watch for misconceptions that we tend to pick up very early in life. Teach your students observation skills and how to explain things using evidence.

Teach students the safe use of magnifying glasses and have them go outside to look at grass, weeds, trees, insects, wood, metal, concrete, and so on. Create little exploration stations and give them cameras to record what they observe, organize the photos and explain. Don’t have preconceived ideas of what you want from the stations, encourage out-of-the-box thinking. Don’t be afraid that you might not have the answers for them.

Have fun.

Hope this helps!

Last week the U.S. Department of Education published three notices in the Federal Register inviting applications for the Education Innovation and Research Program’s Early-phase, Mid-phase, and Expansion competitions.  A priority for these grants is to improve student achievement or other educational outcomes in one or more of the following areas: science, technology, engineering, math, or computer science.

(As you will recall late last year the President asked the Department of Education to create a priority for STEM and Computer Science in existing discretionary federal grants.)

Also last week the Department hosted a webinar highlighting these grant programs and reviewed the priorities to support STEM and Computer Science education. You can access the recorded webinar here. Read the ED press release here.

The Department is seeking individuals interested in becoming a peer reviewer for these grants.  More information can be found here on the call for peer reviewers posted on the EIR website.

ED Office of Civil Rights Highlights STEM Advanced Course Taking Disparities

A new study released last week from the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights reveals stark racial disparities when it comes to students’ access to advanced coursework in STEM subjects.

White students made up nearly half of the 14.6 million students in schools that offered Algebra I in eighth grade and more than half of the students enrolled in Algebra I in eighth grade.

By comparison, black students made up 17 percent of the students in schools that offered the course and just 11 percent of the students enrolled. Latino students made up a quarter of students in schools that offered the course and 18 percent of the students enrolled.

The data also shows that high schools with high percentages of black and Latino students are less likely to offer math and science courses like calculus, physics, chemistry and advanced math.

Read the Department of Education press release, the STEM Course Study pdf, and the Education Week article.

Supporting a Skilled Technical Workforce Focus of Legislation/NSF Grants

The House Science Committee unanimously approved a bipartisan bill that would direct the National Science Foundation to support several new grant programs focused on mentoring, training, and apprenticeships in STEM fields.

 “Innovations in Mentoring, Training, and Apprenticeships Act” would direct the National Science Foundation to issue grants and support research focused on the “skilled technical workforce,” defined as “workers with high school diplomas and two-year technical training or certifications who employ significant levels of STEM knowledge in their jobs.”

The legislation would also authorize $5 million per year over four years for grants to community colleges to “develop or improve” associate degree and certificate programs in high-demand STEM fields and $2.5 million per year over four years for grants to support universities that partner with employers “that commit to offering apprenticeships, internships, research opportunities, or applied learning experiences” to students pursuing four-year STEM degrees.

Read more on the bill here.

50-State Comparison of State Policies on School Leaders Now Available

Research shows that school leadership has one of the greatest impacts on student learning. States have developed policies, grounded in school leadership standards, to strengthen and increase the number of quality school leaders through traditional and alternative routes to preparation and certification. This new 50-State Comparison from the Education Commission of the States includes four data points for preparation, and three for certification and licensure. Explore how your state—and how all states—approach specific school leadership policies.

ESSA Federal Funding for Science/STEM Education in Your School or District

And finally, districts nationwide are planning right now how to use the increased federal funds available from the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) for FY2018. Is science and STEM education part of your district plan? Join me for this May 3 web seminar, more information and register here.

Stay tuned, and watch for more updates in future issues of NSTA Express.

Jodi Peterson is the Assistant Executive Director of Communication, Legislative & Public Affairs for the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) and Chair of the STEM Education Coalition. Reach her via e-mail at jpeterson@nsta.org or via Twitter at @stemedadvocate.

The mission of NSTA is to promote excellence and innovation in science teaching and learning for all.

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