Hi, Lara, I totally agree! I hope many people help us recognize the contributions of our teams of educators who, despite facing remarkable challenges over the last year, created inclusive STEM learning opportunities for students in underserved districts.

Hi Lara,

Thanks for your questions. All of the participants are certified, practicing teachers, school counselors, and a few teacher leaders like coaches or department heads. One of the actions that participating schools agree to when joining the network is to support either the development of a new club or the enhancement of a current one. 

In the virtual settings, positive micromessaging focused primarily around the theme of growth mindset and effective feedback or praise. Teachers also described how this virtual setting provided, or even required, that they model having this growth mindset and resiliency themselves as the various technologies presented challenges for students and teachers to work through together. Additionally, counselors and advisors described their efforts during this past school year to be more purposeful in the representation and diversity of guest speakers or videos used to discuss STEM careers.

Hi Heidi. Thank you for your questions. We have not seen signs of the teachers and counselors discussing micro-messaging with their students. This has been primarily used as a tool for the educators to be mindful of the messaging they send as they are working with students and with one another.

The connections between the technical of the engineering and the justice-oriented content has been evolving. We started with the understanding that providing access to extended day and extended year STEM enrichment and career exploration will only make a difference if this is occurring in an environment that's equitable and inclusive, so it matters to us to make sure that these are not treated as separate ares for growth and change. Up to this point, the content has still continued to be fairly separate with equity content happening for half the day and technical content for the other half of the day. This hasn't been a bad thing. Teachers have appreciated the change in focus, breaking the day into smaller chunks and exercising a different part of the brain. We think, though, that there's even more power and synergy possible. We have a goal for next year to work intentionally toward building more bridges and connections between the two curricula.

You have me thinking about the student perceptions of micromessaging... Thanks!

So much of our work is centered on practicing authenticity. That originates from each of us examining our positionality and reconciling the ways in which we show up, perceive others, and influence the environments in which we participate. 

We could perhaps ask students about their perceptions of the climate and culture of the STEM clubs. This would give us some sense of how effective our educators are at curating inclusive and equitable spaces. 

As far as the synergy, Lara summed it up well. Our program has evolved, and we are super excited about the potential of a fully integrated curriculum this year. 

I'm loving all of the questions. Keep them coming!

The teacher/counselor participants come as a team of 3. This is often not the full science/technology departments, especially since we want to be sure there are counselors/advisors included on that team. We have had a couple of teams, however, where an instructional coach or department head took lessons back to share with other staff. We also have some teams that describe push back from other staff. Each professional culture is different, and that culture plays an important role in how this plays out in their home context.

A sampling of other engineering projects includes an gamified exploration of sorting algorithms, building an optical projector, logic gates to build an LED calculator, building a motor, and of course the FM transmitter. 

Thanks for your interest, Daniel!

We encourage our educator teams to personally recruit students because this is the most effective way of reaching marginalized and minoritized students. Another strategy we encourage is to build on the success of another STEM-related club, instead of creating another one. Exactly how they recruit, I think it varies.

Our program isn't designed to be a train-the-trainer. We want to empower educator teams in their first year to put into practice what they are learning. It is possible that those who are more advanced in their journey can provide professional learning to their colleagues, and we have a few instances of this, though, for many, they are learning all-new ways of instruction, and new engineering content. It wouldn't be prudent to ask them to teach their colleagues, too! When we envisioned the cohort model, we thought that perhaps we'd have some capacity to encourage more teacher-to-teacher dissemination, but as far as I know, we aren't examining that to a great extent. 

Hi, Dr. Clark, 

The teachers take back what they learn in the training and apply it to their school's STEM club. I don't think there is any resistance, other than constraints of time and the limitations COVID caused.  The program isn't designed as a train-the-trainer program. We don't expect educators to go back to their schools and train others on educational equity, but they do share what they learn with others. 

Every year, we recruit new schools with new students. The activities are the same because we use Dr. Goddard's electrical engineering curriculum. We also provide other enriching experiences like talks with industry and college leaders, students have access and scholarships to summer camps and more. 

Thanks for your questions! 

I am heading over right after this to check out the EAR-MI. I am super intrigued and it definitely seems aligned with what we are aiming for in the CISTEME365 initiative. Thanks so much for sharing.

We have been primarily focusing on the teacher, counselor, administer's critical awareness of the micromessages that they send, but you are so right that we also need to be working with our students in raising awareness, as well as assisting educators with how to intervene. The teasing you describe is definitely a thing that needs intervention. Are you or are you aware of initiatives that are tackling the student to student messaging?