By Gillia Bakie | Corporate and Foundation Giving Manager
How do you make great STEM education accessible to EVERY student in Washington? By building a STEM movement with great partners and supporters like you. Here are some highlights of what we've been able to accomplish together over the past quarter:
A STEM Showcase (see photo) run by the West Sound STEM Network in Bremerton attracted 68 participant organizations and hundreds of kids. On the other side of the state, Spokane STEM Network, in partnership with their chamber of commerce, took part in an annual DC Fly-in, and made the case for more comprehensive STEM education policy with legislators in the nation’s capitol (see photo). In April and May 2014, we received 3-year business plans from each our seven networks to ensure their continued work.
An enthusiastic statewide response to STEM-PD technology. 54 schools across Washington applied to our Request for Proposals for grants of STEM-PD technology, which gives teachers access to examples of great teaching and tools for great professional learning. This type of response supports our early research on the appetite for scalable, effective teacher learning technology.
Washington STEM identified five exemplary teachers who are implementing Common Core State Standards and Next Generation Science Standards-aligned teaching as ‘STEM Innovation Pioneers.' These teachers, such as Mike Wierusz in the Northshore School District, exemplify what it means to teach innovatively. Mike uses project-based learning to ground his high school classes, such as the on in the photo attached. These teachers will be granted the STEM-PD video technology in order to share their practices through live feed with other classroom teachers and those who are learning how to teach.
Strong, regular, and trusted media presence across the state is establishing Washington STEM as the state’s go-to source for information on STEM education. Washington STEM has been involved or quoted in six news articles in the past quarter.
Finally - we've grown! We've added a new team member to help support and sustain our work: in April, 2014 we hired on a new Chief Development Officer, Alex Johnston.
Please help us keep the work going by considering a regular monthly gift to Washington STEM. With a monthly pledge, you can help us continue give students in Washington a bridge to opportunity. Thank you, again, for being a STEM supporter.
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By Gillia Lambert | Project Leader
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