Science, technology, engineering, and math, or STEM, policy may shift every four years or so, and educational theories may adapt and evolve, but teachers are the constant. In many different settings — public and private schools, virtually and online, and in partnership with nonprofits and professional societies — teachers deliver STEM education to millions of precollege students every day.
Pressure on all teachers has steadily increased over the last 20 years, as test scores are scrutinized and curriculum content has become politicized. Demands on STEM teachers are especially daunting: They are expected to educate future scientists and engineers to resolve the shortage of STEM professionals while staying current with cutting-edge technologies such as artificial intelligence, including them in the curriculum and using them as teaching tools. STEM teachers are required to create learning experiences that make sense to students with a wide range of physical and cognitive abilities, cultures and languages, and levels of science preparation. How do they meet these challenges?
Advocating for students and teachers
Emily Meyer teaches biology at ThunderRidge high school in Highlands Ranch, Colorado, a suburb of Denver. She teaches general education science, honors biology, and an International Baccalaureate class. She has been teaching for almost 20 years.
She says her students are most excited by hands-on learning opportunities. “My students are generally curious about science and excited about labs, no matter what the subject. They just really like looking at things under a microscope. They especially like labs where they get to light something on fire.”
“My students are generally curious about science and excited about labs, no matter what the subject. They really like looking at things under a microscope. They especially like labs where they get to light something on fire.”
— Emily Meyer
Meyer, who was a neuroscience researcher before becoming a teacher, grapples with the artificial nature of classroom science. “Teaching science is divorced, in many ways, from being a practicing scientist. My experience of being a researcher is that you’re out there on your own. You make stuff up and try it out. If it doesn’t work, you try again.” Yet in the classroom setting, Meyer says, the lab is structured to make a certain point or show a certain phenomenon. It is less messy and uncertain. “I think our education system has trained students to get the right answer and move on. But that’s not always what science is.”
Meyer makes use of her neuroscience training in the classroom. She makes sure that her students are up and moving for a portion of their 90-minute class. She also uses whiteboard reviews to assess their understanding of vocabulary and new material. “It forces everyone to participate. Each student has a whiteboard. I’ll ask a question, and they’ll confer with their partner and hold up their answers. If I get a wide range of answers, then I know we need to discuss the material.”
Meyer enjoys watching her students develop over the years. “It’s especially rewarding when I reteach a student,” she says. “I teach an anatomy elective, and sometimes I’ll have a student I’ve taught before, and I get to see how much they’ve learned in two years.”
One of the biggest changes Meyer has seen during her teaching career is the prevalence of cell phones. “We have to fight for students’ attention,” she says. “I would phrase it as a decline in endurance. I see less ability to persevere through a task that is not a preferred task. There is research to support the idea that cell phones have played a big role in this.”
Another challenge she faces is the increasing demands placed on teachers. “About 40% of my students are on some kind of academic plan,” Meyer says. “It could be an individualized education program, a reading plan, or an English language learner plan. It’s good that kids who need services are getting identified, but it’s unrealistic to expect the classroom teacher to do it all. I don’t get more time or staff to help provide those services.”
Meyer wants to help teachers as well as students, so she is involved in the National Science Teaching Association and the Colorado Association of Science Teachers. “I only survived in the beginning because I had colleagues who mentored me. Teaching is a hard job, and we need good teachers. We need to provide support and make it easier for each other. I’m inspired by the people who take on this challenging profession.”
You can do this
Carla Neely teaches sixth and seventh grade science and computer science at the Warner Girls Leadership Academy in the Cleveland Metropolitan School District in Ohio. Warner is one of four single-gender schools in the district and aims to empower girls through rigorous academics, leadership development, and an enriched environment. Neely has taught for 27 years, the last 10 at Warner.
Neely speaks frankly with her students about identifying as an African American woman in STEM and dealing with the fact that she is often the only woman and the only African American person at teacher training sessions. She has also arranged for a diverse group of women STEM majors from Case Western Reserve University to mentor her students and work with them on projects. In a February 2022 article in the Computer Science Teachers Association publication, Voice, Neely said, “This boosted the girls’ self-esteem and confidence.
“If you have created a safe environment in your classroom, your students will feel comfortable enough to tell you how they want to learn.”
— Carla Neely
“I also noticed the girls with behavior problems, learning disabilities, and low achievement did better with computer science than my advanced learners. I feel the reason is because computer science is hands-on.”
Neely describes her students as inquisitive and energetic. “They enjoy learning science because I make it so interesting and so much fun,” she says. Her students often have not had any science in elementary school, where the emphasis is on English language arts and math; science gets put on the back burner. “When they come to me, they don’t have a lot of the material they need to master the content in my class,” Neely says. “And because they’re older, they are very sensitive about this — especially if in the past, they haven’t succeeded at something science-related.”
Many girls in Neely’s classes think that science is beyond them, that they can’t do it. So, Neely works hard to get her students to understand the value and relevance of science. “Once they understand that science is at their house, they end up liking it. They are doing science at home — they’re cooking, they’re cleaning, they’re building things, they’re drawing. That can be the challenging part, making science realistic and personal.”
Neely believes in giving her students some control over how they learn. She says, “If you have created a safe environment in your classroom, your students will feel comfortable enough to tell you how they want to learn.”
One important change that Neely has observed in the last several years is an increase in the number of students with emotional problems and mental illness. “Yes, we see learning disabilities, but we are also seeing depression and PTSD [post-traumatic stress disorder].”
What Neely finds most gratifying about teaching science is seeing her students begin to think critically and relate what they have learned in the classroom to the world outside. “It’s rewarding for me to see the students begin to enjoy science. And I like having those conversations about them noticing how the issues in the news and on TV connect to the science I have taught them.”
Hit the ground running
This fall, Ariana Kay began a new job at Richland High School in Prosper, Texas, in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. She teaches principles of applied engineering, engineering design and presentation, engineering problem-solving, and aerospace engineering.
“I want to do justice to the subject, so I don’t want something too easy. It should be challenging enough for students who plan to go into engineering.”
— Ariana Kay
Like many public high schools in Texas, Richland has a Career and Technical Education program, a course sequence that prepares students for college and for jobs in specific careers, such as law, STEM, or health sciences. For example, students on the engineering pathway learn Fusion 360, a 3D modeling platform, and earn a certification in the program. “So, instead of working at McDonald’s after school, they can get a good job doing 3D modeling,” Kay says.
She describes her students as highly motivated and science-oriented. “They choose my pathway because they already know they want to go into engineering,” she says. Her wish is to establish a SWENext club or a robotics competition at Richland to boost girls’ participation in the engineering pathway.
It has been difficult for Kay to find engineers to come to the school and talk to her students. It has also been hard to find a curriculum that is a good fit. “I want to do justice to the subject, so I don’t want something too easy. It should be challenging enough for students who plan to go into engineering.”
Kay has a B.S. in chemistry with minors in biology and physics. She has been teaching for 15 years. “I wanted to go into research after college,” she says. “But I’m from the Caribbean, and when I graduated, companies did not want to hire international students and deal with immigration issues.” Kay takes research classes for teachers and applies what she learns to her teaching.
Kay is an executive board member for the Science Teachers Association of Texas and finds it fulfilling. “We plan a conference for 5,000 Texas science teachers, and when the state changed its standards, I was instrumental in designing some of those standards.” She is very gratified when she identifies students who are thinking like engineers: persisting, working through difficult problems, and coming up with unique solutions.
Individual attention
Alicia Eugenio, who has a B.S. in mechanical engineering and a master’s in engineering management, works on the validation team for a tech company that makes high-performance sports cars. She also serves as a math tutor with EnCorps, a California nonprofit that connects volunteer STEM tutors with students from low-income communities. She has been tutoring one student, a girl now in ninth grade, for four years.
Eugenio describes her as “incredibly smart.” At first, her favorite subject was English, and she was doing just OK in math. “She didn’t have the confidence to push a bit more, but we formed a relationship where we trusted each other and could be open about what we think,” Eugenio says. “She learned that giving the wrong answer is OK, and that was a breakthrough.
“We formed a relationship where we trusted each other and could be open about what we think. We talk through the problem if she doesn’t get it right.”
— Alicia Eugenio
“This is peer teaching. We talk through the problem if she doesn’t get it right. I ask, ‘What happened? What do you think this means?’ This gives her a second opportunity to digest the material.”
Working outside a classroom setting slows the pace, Eugenio says. “That reduces stress and allows my student to use different strategies to come up with a solution.”
Eugenio discovered that she and her student both like Harry Potter, so she devised problems based on the books. For example, she names variables in an algebra problem for characters, such as H for Hedwig, and teaches currency conversions with galleons instead of dollars. “That kind of broke the ice,” Eugenio says. “We don’t just talk about math. We talk about my student’s other classes, our families, and holiday plans, too.” These conversations have created a strong bond, which, in turn, has boosted the student’s math skills.
This kind of relationship is facilitated by the one-on-one tutoring mode. The student can relax and speak her mind in part because the sessions take place online, away from family and outside of school. The main obstacle Eugenio has encountered during these four years is weak and unreliable Wi-Fi.
Math teaching strategies have changed since Eugenio was in school, but she and her student turned this potential liability into an asset. For example, they taught each other different techniques for doing three-digit multiplication. “She was able to go from an older technique to a new one,” Eugenio says. “Many students memorize steps, but they don’t understand why they’re doing those steps, so they can’t apply the technique or see it from a different perspective.”
Eugenio has also educated the student about STEM jobs and career paths. She says, “When I started working with [her], I asked her what she wanted to do after high school. Her plan was to go to a trade school because that’s what her father did.”
However, the student recently received a grant that contributes a generous amount toward college every year. She told Eugenio, “OK, now I have to go to college.”
Eugenio says, “It was so rewarding, just to hear her say that.”
Where We Go From Here
Recent efforts by the current administration to eliminate funding and weaken science-based organizations such as the National Science Foundation, the National Academies, the National Institutes of Health, and the Federal Environmental Protection Agency directly and indirectly threaten STEM education. But efforts to strengthen precollege STEM education in the U.S. and to ensure opportunities to learn for girls and members of historically marginalized groups have tremendous momentum, bolstered by a growing body of research in cognitive and learning science.
Ashley Huderson, Ph.D., senior director of programs at the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, or ASME, is optimistic that STEM education will continue to move forward. She says, “Scientists are smart, and they are good with words. If we can’t say ‘diversity,’ fine; we’ll figure out how to get our message across. And we are strategic. We know how to strike that balance between surviving day-to-day and making way for what comes next.”
Dr. Huderson has been immersed in STEM education all her adult life. She earned a B.S. in chemistry from Spelman College and a Ph.D. in biomedical research from Meharry Medical College, and served as an adjunct professor for 10 years. Seeing statistics that showed only a small percentage of Black women have advanced degrees in science hit home. She says, “I decided to dedicate my career to dismantling systemic barriers and enabling others to explore science, math, and engineering.”
The science community is a strong one, Dr. Huderson believes, but is moving into a period in which members of scientific organizations will need to create partnerships and align themselves with people who share their values. For example, she points out, “ASME is a technical society. That is our focus. But it gives us a certain privilege and puts us in a position to help our identity-based sister engineering societies navigate the current situation.”
The effects of defunding science and STEM programs are likely to show up in the future, Dr. Huderson says. “There will be setbacks and major consequences to our future STEM workforce. In the 1950s and 1960s, when public schools were desegregated, many closed because people were not comfortable with integration. We had a whole population of kids who didn’t go to school for two to three years. We saw similar deficits on the heels of COVID-19. So there will be challenges around how prepared students are, but we know so much more about STEM education now. I think science learning scholars and researchers can help offset these effects.” — MH
