Learn how to blend career-connected learning with STEM learning using a suite of career awareness and exploration resources featuring diverse STEM professionals and workplaces. These freely available resources work well in both formal & informal settings for students in 3rd grade through college!

TAKEAWAYS:
ISB has free online videos & resources for career-connected learning. These can be used in formal classrooms & extracurricular programs to highlight nontraditional STEM careers & fields. They also help build systems thinking skills that are applicable and important for student success in any field.

SPEAKERS:
Sara Calder (Preservice Teacher: Seattle, WA), Miranda Johnson (Systems Thinkers in STEM Coordinator)

Inspired by recent space launches? Wondering how to capture the excitement with your students? Join us to learn how we use rocketry and avionics to teach data analysis and system engineering. This course allows exploration of Newton’s 2nd Law through guided modules that develop knowledge and skills.

TAKEAWAYS:
Educators will explore the phenomena of rocketry through a hands-on activity focused on hardware and flight. They will then formulate how predictive and actual data tell the whole story of the rocket's flight. The session culminates with the supports to make rocketry accessible in their classroom.

SPEAKERS:
Heather Arnett (STEM Coordinator: Champaign, IL)

BRIDGES is a new initiative through the U.S. Department of Energy Bioenergy Technologies Office, Idaho National Laboratory and Argonne National Laboratory to bridge the awareness and learning gaps for rural and urban communities as well as students from underrepresented groups. In this session, we will introduce our four new educational case studies in bioenergy that place students in collaborative and decision-making roles. Through the cases, students learn how bioenergy is important in our lives and is also being used to solve real environmental and economic challenges. Students will also discover career options for both non-technical and technical skills that can be used in the government, national laboratories, as well as private industry. Scientific practice skills such as developing and using models and obtaining, analyzing and interpreting data are featured in the cases.

TAKEAWAYS:
Attendees will be introduced to four newly developed case study curricular resources that feature cutting edge science in sustainable aviation fuel, waste to energy, plastics upcycling, and biofuel feedstocks. After working one of the case studies, they will leave prepared to use it in the classroom

SPEAKERS:
Jennifer Jackson (Precollege and Early Workforce Development Manager: , ID), Kelly Sturner (Argonne National Labaratory: Lemont, IL)

Teaching Biology to ESL students sitting in our science classrooms can be challenging. In this session we will dive into Macromolecules with hands-on activities using toys as manipulatives and concluding with a mini investigation comparing macromolecule nutrients in cow's milk with nondairy milk.

TAKEAWAYS:
Macromolecules can be overwhelming to ESL students who have limited English and Biology vocabulary skills. In this session we will break down a difficult topic into hands-on activities and a mini investigation that will bring Macromolecules to life.

SPEAKERS:
Sarida Hoy (Dalton High School: No City, No State)

This project was funded by a National Science Foundation grant to expose high school students to geoscience within their required science curriculum. A collateral benefit is integrating key concepts in other sciences. In Biology, natural selection requires eons (“deep time”) to create Earth’s biodiversity. In project-based learning using fossil-bearing rocks of multiple ages, students experience deep time concretely. A barrier to hands-on fossil study is the expense of specimens good enough for university students to systematically learn fossil taxa. However, imperfect samples can connect anyone to deep time. Ironically, some such samples are simply dumped when teachers return from professional development field trips. This presentation reveals a path to making use of such ordinary material by 1) circling fossils in ink, 2) creating a picture guide from circled fossils, 3) building a PBL unit uniting those fossils with a biodiversity-though-time graphic known as a Tree of Life diagram.

TAKEAWAYS:
Might students better master evolution standards, especially extinction and adaptation, by encountering fossils through "deep time"? Teacher-collected samples, with fossils circled in ink, a picture guide made from the set, and a detailed Tree of Life diagram form foundations for PBL exploration.

SPEAKERS:
Katty Mobasher (Professor of Geology and GIS: , GA), Adrianna Rajkumar (Lecturer), Bill Witherspoon (geologist/educator: Decatur, GA)

Empowering students to make science-based decisions requires acknowledgment and dialogue around the injustices marginalized communities have endured within scientific fields. We will engage in meaningful talk around race, vaccinations, and applications within a sample lesson for science classrooms.

TAKEAWAYS:
Create opportunities to acknowledge and validate students’ personal experiences even when it might be divergent from our own personal experiences or larger data sets.

SPEAKERS:
Justin Betzelberger (UCLA Science Project: Los Angeles, CA), Richard Huynh (Science Coach: No City, No State), Zachary Cue (UCLA STEM+C3 and Science Project)

This session will pair seemingly odd ideas (roleplaying and buffers) together for a dynamic activity that increases student engagement. Roleplaying is an effective instructional strategy that supports ELL learners and those who need harder concepts broken down.

TAKEAWAYS:
Participants will learn a differentiated approach to introducing buffers, one of the most challenging topics in AP Chemistry, in a creative and fun activity where ELL and students of all levels will learn about buffers.

SPEAKERS:
Permeil Dass (: Tyrone, GA)