For Educators

About

This site was created as a resource for other educators and students after the success of implementing this program in my own classes. I often see that students have an interest in the STEAM, but aren't aware that there are jobs out there in STEAM, so they don't pursue more science, etc. I hope you are able to use this resource to inspire your students to seek out some of these awesome careers. Not only will these activities help students consider careers in STEAM, these can also be used as good introductory activities, sub day plans, and unit transition period activities.

Video Diversity Focus

Another observation that I have made and something which research points to is the strong effect of role models on young people in career selection. To that end, I tried to find short videos with a diversity of individuals in both race and gender. For some careers, it was difficult to find any diversity in the available youtube videos. So not every career has full representation. If you have any recommendations for new videos or if you're working in a STEAM field and want to make and upload your own, feel free to email your suggestions to me. I would love to look them over and add them!

General Lesson Plans

Whole Class

Goal: The primary goal of this activity is to expose students to positive role models in STEAM careers and to help them consider careers in STEAM. Having students reflect on skills and if they want the job or not can help them discover what they like, their interests, their own strengths, and what they'd like to explore. Have students reflect on community impact may help young women to identify with these careers as research has shown that being able to help others in their career is important for many young women.

Objectives: Students will watch short videos of people talking about their careers in STEAM. Students will reflect on each career.

Procedure:

1. Introduce the activity to students by telling them that the class will be participating in a STEAM careers lesson each week (or unit) so that they can see what jobs are available and what education they need for these careers.

2. Tell students the career theme for the day. Instruct them to write down the name of the career on a piece of paper.

3. Before showing the first video, tell students to pay attention to what the person doing the job likes about it and what skills and education are needed.

4. Show the videos.

5. Write down the education needed for the job and the average salary or salary range on the board, and instruct students to copy these onto their paper.

6. Ask students to write down what skills they saw or think are needed for the job on their paper.

7. Ask students to reflect, and write on their paper, "If you were offered this job right now, would you take it? Why?" and, "How could I positively impact my community with a job like this?"

8. When students have completed their responses, ask for a show of hands, who would take the job right now and why or why not to start class discussion. Alternatively, you could do a think-pair-share.

Independent

Alternatively, this activity can be done independently using this website. You can create a google document with each of the previous writing prompts, and point students to this website in order to explore one career at a time. It is recommended that students focus on one career at a time (no more than one per day), so they get equal exposure to each career, even if they think they wouldn't want to do it before reading about and watching the videos.

Resources

Student Reflection Document

Click on it to open the document. Please make a copy for your own use.