Self-paced classrooms are a means to run a STEM class where the teacher becomes a facilitator of learning to their students. A self-paced classroom is one where the students will engage with the class material at a rate that is appropriate for them. Assignments are rated into different categories worth different point values so that students can make a choice each day in how they want to approach their learning. This kind of environment encourages development of executive functioning skills, cooperative learning skills, and other soft skills necessary to be successful as a 21st century learner, scientist, or engineer. It also meets the needs of both the highest and the lowest functioning learners. In this session, we will learn in more detail about self-paced classrooms, how to implement them, and how to develop different types of activities and locate resources that work well for this kind of environment, including interactive digital notebooks, pixel art, EdPuzzles, digital crossword puzzles, lab experiments, digital and live escape rooms, and more! Join me as we learn how we can make equity for all enjoyable for all the students.

TAKEAWAYS:
How to use various computer programs, specifically in the Google Suite, to create an equitable classroom environment.

SPEAKERS:
Elizabeth Stewart-Miranda (Greater Lowell Technical High School: Tyngsboro, MA)

In this workshop we will demonstrate for teachers how easy it is to form lasting, interactive partnerships with corporations, nonprofits, and local community organizations and discuss how these partnerships create a community of STEM learning that allows students to connect their learning with the real world. We will model a variety of direct connections between classroom science concepts and corporate processes and bring awareness to the power of establishing successful connections between organizational systems and careers. Field-based, first hand experiences in forming partnerships will be shared in an open discussion that helps educators identify the numerous benefits for both learners and partners that are brought by incorporating potential partners within the classroom. We will provide a systems-based approach for how to research potential partners, develop effective relationships, and reduce potential feelings of uncertainty on behalf of both the educator(s) and the non educator(s). Additionally, we will explore the power of perspectives as we highlight how non educators learn the value of their shared time, experience, and knowledge with students. We will look at tried and true, interactive presentations made by corporate, nonprofit, and community partners and discuss the importance of student feedback that is later provided to the partners.

TAKEAWAYS:
Attendees will learn how to establish meaningful corporate and nonprofit partnership opportunities, the benefits of partnering, and the natural connections that exist between a variety of science concepts and corporate systems that promote student engagement and real world learning.

SPEAKERS:
Debby Nelson (Rotolo Middle School: Batavia, IL), Elizabeth Kaleta (John C. Dunham STEM Partnership School: Aurora, IL)

Participants will be given a chance to experience what their students might encounter in this eesmarts digital activity based in an escape room format. Clues must be gathered and puzzles solved using science knowledge to successfully complete the challenge. The format provokes high student interest and engagement due to its game-like nature. The use of technology lends itself well to remote learning but can also be seamlessly translated to enhance in-person learning. The focus of the content in this particular activity involves the transformation of energy and its impact on the environment. Participants will be actively engaged throughout the presentation by experiencing the escape room. They will be provided with a digital toolbox to help them create an interactive slide of their own. This escape room is a companion to the eesmarts K-12 curriculum, an energy efficiency and clean, renewable energy learning initiative funded by the Connecticut Energy Efficiency Fund. Select digital resources will be provided to participants. The complete eesmarts program is free and available to all Connecticut educators.

TAKEAWAYS:
Participants will experience and explore ideas to enhance in-person learning through competitive activities and gamification using and adapting a digital escape room format with an energy focus or their existing curriculum.

SPEAKERS:
Rebecca Tonkinson (eesmarts: Hartford, CT), Sharyon Holness (eesmarts: No City, No State)

Empathic engineering design can help develop students’ cultural competence as well as inform the design of more useful innovations for people with limb differences.

TAKEAWAYS:
School-based activities that are oriented toward improving community members’ lives can simultaneously support the development of students’ cultural competence and integrated STEM literacy.

SPEAKERS:
Susan Meabh Kelly (University of Connecticut: Storrs Mansfield, CT), Brittany Klimowicz (NYC iSchool: New York, NY)

Student understanding of how science and STEM ideas and concepts are applied within their chosen career pathway is a critical component of many Career and Technical Education (CTE) programs, but for a variety of reasons these connections are often overlooked. Some states even provide CTE courses and Career Pathway standards that seem to go against the three-dimensional and student-centered learning grain. Yet, to truly meet the vision of the K-12 Framework, students in CTE and Vocational Education pathways should also be provided opportunities to engage in three-dimensional sensemaking in the context of their CTE course. In this session, we explore explicit connections between three-dimensional science learning and Agricultural, Food and Natural Resources as just one example of how three-dimensional student learning and sensemaking can be incorporated into CTE. We then explore how similar strategies can be utilized in other pathways with the goal of bridging the gap between science learning and practical application for students in CTE.

TAKEAWAYS:
Attendees will learn strategies for integrating scientific sensemaking into CTE courses to support their students' mastery of the scientific concepts they will apply in those fields.

SPEAKERS:
Bridina Lemmer (Illinois Science Teaching Association: Jacksonville, IL), Chris Embry Mohr (Olympia High School: Stanford, IL)

A challenge that STEM education presents to educators is how to stay current in an ever-evolving field to accurately represent and engage their students with new topics, activities, and careers. Too often STEM teachers become locked-in on a set of topics, activities, and careers because of the resources and opportunities to which they have access. After-school programs, and their ability to foster partnerships within a school’s larger STEM ecosystem, are one mechanism to open up STEM programs within schools to new topics, activities, and careers while offering avenues for professional growth and learning for the classroom teacher. By introducing the Science Olympiad program and the strategies used by our school participants for over three decades to build partnerships, connect to their STEM ecosystem, and expand learning we intend to help attendees draw parallels to their STEM ecosystems and their after-school programs. Building off of this information, attendees will analyze and discuss ways their STEM ecosystem can contribute to their STEM program, develop approaches for asking ecosystem members for support, and recognize opportunities to grow their STEM program through after-school programs. The session will close with a discussion of attendees’ specific challenges and issues ensuring attendees leave with actionable solutions.

TAKEAWAYS:
The big takeaway from this session will attendees examining their STEM ecosystem to identify potential partners who align with their programming and can support student learning.

SPEAKERS:
John Loehr (Science Olympiad: Oakbrook Terrace, IL)

Toshiba America Foundation wants to work together with teachers who are looking for a better way to engage the community in STEM. Participants will hear from educators that have won money for their school and communities to implement STEM action projects.

TAKEAWAYS:
Participants will learn how they can receive cash awards and acknowledge for STEM action projects.

SPEAKERS:
John Anderson (Toshiba America Foundation: Irvine, CA)

Culturally relevant pedagogy embodies a professional, political, cultural, ethnical, and ideological disposition that supersedes mundane teaching acts; it is centered in fundamental beliefs about teaching, learning, students, their families, and their communities, and an unyielding commitment to see student success become less rhetoric and more of a reality. This session will aid in building awareness and sensitivity to the culture-based genius that students bring to the classroom using science inquiry strategies. Emphasis will be placed on a model for the inclusion of culturally relevant content that accommodates student backgrounds and methods of learning. In this session, we will exhibit how to identify the key characteristics of culturally responsive lessons. Attendees will acquire lesson design methods that employ cultural competence and effective communication. Attendees will use collaborate boards during the presentation to respond and interact. Activities to exhibit how students identify with what they know in the classroom will be utilized to help educators make connections and apply this information when planning lessons.

TAKEAWAYS:
Building awareness and sensitivity to the culture-based genius that students bring to the classroom using science inquiry strategies. Emphasis will be placed on a model for the inclusion of culturally relevant content that accommodates student backgrounds and methods of learning.

SPEAKERS:
Kelly Haynes (Baker High School: Baker, LA), Jennifer Norwood (Instructional Support Specialist), Tara Hollins (Exceptional Student Services Educator: Zachary, LA)

Learn how Ohio 4-H and the Ohio Academy of Science have partnered to offer the a free STEM entrepreneurial program for junior high and high school students. Educators will participate in activities that will showcase student-centered learning experiences that allows them to explore entrepreneurship in the formal classroom, home-school classroom or 4-H SPIN Club. The curriculum teaches students how to commercialize solutions to problems by developing a STEM Commercialization Plan or STEM Business Plan. The goal of the program is to create a culture of innovation. This is accomplished by focusing on the practical application of STEM and related fields and the development of an entrepreneurial mindset and the critical thinking skills students will need in the future.

TAKEAWAYS:
This session will provide the tools needed to expand student participation in STEM by connecting classroom educators to the broad community of 4-H officers, leaders and facilitators.

SPEAKERS:
Angela McMurry (The Ohio Academy of Science: Dublin, OH), Mark Light (The Ohio State University: Columbus, OH)

Students find science difficult or non-stimulating particularly when teachers do not consider cognitive, physiological, and socio-emotional disparities in students. Research has shown that engaging the appropriate parts of the brain helps students make a long-lasting, personalized connection to scientific concepts and practices. Studies show that discipline and learning problems in our classrooms may be associated with a lack of student engagement. Engaged students are less likely to be disruptive and are more likely to retain information longer. The focus of this presentation is to equip teachers with the pedagogical skills and strategies needed to drive student engagement and achievement by recognizing and addressing physiological, cognitive, and socio-emotional disparities in students based on an understanding of how a learner’s brain works. Participating teachers will explore the impact of emotions, storytelling, culturally relevant and hands-on learning on the forebrain and consequently on student engagement and comprehension. Teachers will learn to correctly harness the learning power of the forebrain, particularly, those of the hippocampus and amygdala, by appropriately employing suitable learning strategies. These will enhance student engagement, improve learning outcomes and increase academic achievement in the sciences.

TAKEAWAYS:
Teachers will learn to correctly harness the learning power of the forebrain, particularly, those of the hippocampus and amygdala, by appropriately employing suitable learning strategies

SPEAKERS:
Chidi Duru (Prince George's County Public Schools: Upper Marlboro, MD)

Obtaining food to meet our energy and matter needs is a basic requirement of humans and food also defines our culture. This presentation will share how to use elements of the three dimensions of the NGSS and Framework to engage students in making sense of phenomena and problems related to food. Strategies for how to use driving question boards, lesson level learning targets, and engage all learners will be shared. Specific attention will be given for how to align assessments that challenge students to apply their understandings. Participants will engage in a morsel of a storyline on producing the perfect apple. In this storyline, students notice and wonder about different varieties of apples and are challenged to explain why it took 30 years for the Honeycrisp apple to be available to consumers. Students ask questions for how perfect apples are mass produced, how nutrients and environmental factors affect the quality of fruit, and how to attain the right balance of sweet-tart flavor. This storyline weaves together scientific concepts such as meiosis and mitosis, pedigrees and probability, plant structure and function, nutrient cycles, the role of photosynthesis in producing food, and how plants use cellular respiration to survive the winter.

TAKEAWAYS:
Engage in conversations for how to use the three dimensions of the NGSS and the NRC Framework, storylines, driving questions, formative and summative assessments, and hands-on activities to learn science and engineering skills while making sense of one of our most basic needs – FOOD.

SPEAKERS:
Chris Embry Mohr (Olympia High School: Stanford, IL)