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Your Journey Starts Here

This website is to support you in creating a culture of reflection for your educators' professional growth in supporting failure moments during STEAM-making activities, including workshops, drop-in sessions, and camps. We focus on failure because the important role it plays in increasing youth's persistence, motivation, self-efficacy, and agency within fields that encourage innovation and creativity.

Our intent is for this website to serve as a resource and interactive guide based on our partnerships with six museums. Each museum has their own page that highlights the details of their professional development model and lessons learned, their definition of failure, quotes highlighting their experiences as an education team, and general information about their museum. We invite you to not only explore the individual sites, but utilize this website as a toolkit for you to facilitate and engage your organization (e.g., makerspace, library, museum, zoo) and educational team with reflecting upon and making professional shifts in your approach to supporting youth through failures. We further encourage you to notice how each museum site adapted the PD cycle to make it their own. The cycle is meant to be flexible and adaptable to align with your STEAM-making programs, support your educators and their instructional needs and goals, and fit within your hectic schedule. 

Be vulner-ageous [vulnerable & courageous]

• As a sharer - bring related personal experiences to the group.

• As a learner - listen with curiosity and lean into empathy. 

• As a colleague - think “professional vulnerability”; ask questions/change things in order to improve your practice and programs. 

• As a team - collaborate and communicate with others both in and outside your site.