CLASSROOM MATERIALS
The classroom-based activities and materials for My STEM Story include videos, slides, and small-group and large-group discussion facilitated by the classroom teacher. Additionally, students will individually work through the Student Journal to reflect on past experiences and envision their future selves in science. We designed these materials carefully to support all aspects of teacher facilitation and student engagement, but we expect adaptations will be necessary for every context.
Teacher Guide
The teacher guide and classroom protocol provide a detailed guide for facilitation. Teachers will find specific language and key points to highlight. Teacher messaging, modeling, and story sharing is an important part of the facilitation. Teachers are encouraged to relate stories from their lives and personalize the protocol for their unique classrooms. These steps can build community and highlight that this experience is different from a typical science class. We encourage teachers to download all slides from the linked Google Drive and customize them for their classroom.
Student Journal
The My STEM Story Student Journal can be printed out for each student. This journal will help them document their reflective journey throughout the program. The journal includes prompts, text space, and fillable diagrams to visualize and express a possible future self in science. Additionally, students will find definitions for key terms they encounter.
SESSION 1: Why Does Science Matter?
This session begins with reflections on our assumptions about science. The session includes two videos. The first shows eight different mentee high school aged and near-peer undergraduate students who will be featured in each accompanying video in subsequent sessions. The video provides an overview to the My STEM Story project, where high school students shadowed and worked with university students during a week learning about undergraduate science.
The students in the video share why they value science in our world and what kinds of skills and dispositions are needed to pursue science. The second video in this session shows the mentors and mentees talking about some of the skills needed to do science. As high school students may not necessarily think of these skills their first time through, this part of the session may provide some additional ideas for them to consider when reflecting on the strengths they bring to doing science.
We’ve also included a set of slides to help facilitate Session 1 instruction.
Video 1.1: Why Science Matters
Video 1.2: Skills and Attitudes to Do Science
SESSION 2: Seeing Myself in the Far Past, Near Past, Near Future, and Far Future
This session asks students to imagine in detail what the experience of science means and feels like to them. Students will see a descriptive experience of science in action in the video for this session. This video will prime students to reflect on their own past, present and imagined future experiences in science through all of their senses. Naturally, this reflecting and imagining will tap into their unique interests.
We’ve included a set of slides to help facilitate Session 2 instruction.
Video 2.1: Look and Feel of Science
SESSION 3: Facing Difficulty—Positive and Negative Forces
Students will revisit what they had imagined in the last class. The class will watch a video of a mentor and mentee discussing the positive and negative forces they experienced in pursuing science interests in high school and college. Students will think about the positive forces—role models, supports, influences, and personal choices—which lift them up toward success. They will also think about the negative forces—influences, distractions, and personal choices—which make them feel it isn’t worth trying hard or that their goals won’t be reached.
We’ve included a set of slides to help facilitate Session 3 instruction.
Video 3.1: Positive and Negative Forces
SESSION 4: Pathways to the Future
Students will think about their own timeline, goals, potential forks and roadblocks they may encounter, and the strategies they can use to persist. They will encounter strategies and pathways of other students in the My STEM Story video. Students will think about why what they do today and tomorrow is important to their future. They will reflect on how a future timeline is not certain because we don’t know what will happen. This session reinforces that what you do now matters for the next year version of yourself and for your future.
We’ve included a set of slides to help facilitate Session 4 instruction.
Video 4.1: Forks, Roadblocks and Timelines
SESSION 5: Science as an Act of Service
In this final session, students will think about science and its connection to their community and the world, more broadly. Students will reflect back to their experience in the COVID-19 pandemic and think about other moments when the importance of science has been spotlighted. Students will think about issues in their community that concern them and relate those concerns to their possible future self in science. This module is aimed at connecting students’ values to their interests and possible pursuits in science.
We’ve included a set of slides to help facilitate Session 5 instruction.
Video 5.1: Science as an Act of Service