STEAM education

which is from the community and outside the community with people who are experts in whatever subject matter.

Because of our STEAM, your welding ability would be great for that.

So we could bring you in for that.

And it's interesting.

And our afternoon program runs Monday through Thursday because we all have meetings Friday afternoons on early release.

But, um, The afternoon program, they do academics two days a week, and then they do fun stuff two days a week.

And I was able to get funding to purchase art-related and STEAM.

STEAM is science, technology, engineering, art, and math.

So my sessions that I'm really excited about, the first one on Wednesday, actually at 12 o'clock for me.

is STEAM and just calling the creative play in STEAM and just use it in the classroom.

I know over the past few years, a lot of educators have been asked to include STEM and STEAM into their classroom.

And I've had a lot of folks reach out to me and say, I don't necessarily feel equipped to do that.

I don't have STEM and STEAM training, but I just need to add it in somehow.

So I love this session because I feel like I have something for everyone across the grade levels of just easy ways to implement STEM and STEAM into your regular classroom without having to like call it the special, you know, steam day or steam hour, just, you know, just adding it in here and there.

So I'm excited about that one.

Every time I add to it, I just, I get more excited about it.

Hey everyone, it's Samantha and welcome back to another episode of Paths.

Paths is a program of LGBT tech that is focused on disability and inclusion of LGBTQ plus folks in STEAM.

Pat's podcast allows us to talk to professionals across the LGBTQ plus community in various STEAM fields and get to hear their stories from their background to how they got to where they are, to their advice for others on how to get into their fields and industries.

Everyone's paths vary, are unique, and are incredibly insightful.

Before we jump into this month's episode, don't forget to like, follow, and subscribe to show your support and never miss another episode.

But I definitely see that some of my friends were pushed out of physics because they don't fit that box.

Awesome.

And then based on either your personal experience or those of the experience of your students that you've seen, do you feel like STEAM fields pose barriers for marginalized communities or like underrepresented communities?

At Shaftesbury School, the familiar STEM subjects, science, technology, engineering and maths, have been joined by the arts.

They've inserted the A to make STEAM, an approach John Elliott strongly welcomes.

Absolutely, because so often it's excluded from the curriculum.

And terrible impoverishment, therefore, it seems to me.

This is really meant not just to be STEM focused and get kids involved, excited about STEM, which I think is insanely important.

This is about STEAM, which you include the art into it.

And I think that's where we forget how important the arts are in science.

Science is art when you think about it.

It's I think the idea that STEM is the way of the future has sort of, people are like, okay, that's not totally right.

So now we talk about STEAM, right? So they're recognizing you miss something about what it means to be human if you eliminate the arts and humanities from education.

But the economic model and the like, the what you get as a graduate of a program is now so deeply questioned, both in terms of like, how did I finance it and how is it financed and what good does it do me as a consumer of education, right? Yeah.

That is both an important question to ask, but then also a societally an issue that everybody in higher ed is facing.

I just used a lot of technology and really became a STEAM teacher.

I wrote a book on STEAM for ISTE called STEAM Power that changed my trajectory a little bit.

my district had an opening for an educational technology position that I took.

No one had occupied it before.

Yeah, well, I guess they call it STEM.

It should be STEAM.

It should be STEAM.

We shouldn't be using STEM anymore, science, technology, engineering, and math.

We got to get the A in there for arts.