STEP UP is a national community that designs physics lessons to empower teachers, create cultural change, and inspire young women to pursue physics in college. Two lessons, Careers in Physics and Women in Physics, are freely available and supported by an online community of educators.

TAKEAWAYS:
STEP UP Careers in Physics and Women in Physics lessons show students how physics helps them reach their future careers goals. This poster will walk you through the lessons that aim to increase representation of women with physics degrees and shift deep-seated cultural views about who does physics.

SPEAKERS:
Nicole Murawski (Royal Oak High School (retired))

Pop culture is a shared language between teachers and students. Discrepant events from movies, television, video games, and even TikToks can promote argumentation and meaningful collaboration and are a novel way to approach teaching a STEM curriculum. Using pop culture to draw even distal connections between this world and the classroom increases engagement and helps to make learning accessible to populations historically underserved in STEM. With a bank of strategies developed over years of integrating pop culture in the classroom, we will show how to add relevance and accessibility to the STEM curriculum. We will illustrate how to seamlessly integrate these strategies into existing lesson plans and allow time for audience collaboration and brainstorming on how to incorporate these ideas into their classrooms. Web resources will be provided that are constantly being updated to keep content current and relevant.

TAKEAWAYS:
Mixing pop culture amps authentic engagement and understanding for all learners, including the historically underserved, reluctant, and ESL students.

SPEAKERS:
Matt Brady (Atkins High School: Winston-Salem, NC)