Massachusetts STEM Summit 2018

Learn how accessible, on-line data on job trends in STEM industries can help guide curriculum, connect with industry and improve career awareness among students. As we work to build the STEM pipeline and create career pathways for students, educators need to have access to clear data and analysis that effectively conveys the skill needs of STEM industries. By examining an ongoing partnership between the biopharmaceutical industry and higher education, facilitated by the MassBioEd Foundation, attendees will learn how the daunting task of aligning education programs with the skill requirements of STEM employers can be greatly eased by the effective use of available data on hiring trends. This session includes panelists from higher education, industry and a data provider, who will share how access to such data and analysis has created a common ground for industry and higher education to come together to help direct alignment around skills development and provide new tools for educators at the secondary and post-secondary level to better create awareness among students about careers in the life sciences, for which 12,000 additional jobs will need to be filled by 2023.

The 2016 MA Science and Technology/Engineering Curriculum Framework, 2017 MA Mathematics Curriculum Framework, and 2017 Digital Literacy and Computer Science Curriculum Framework, establish a vision for all students. That, all students, regardless of their future education plan and career path, must have an engaging, relevant, rigorous, and coherent pre-K–12 STEM education to be prepared for citizenship, continuing education, and careers. As the STEM Office within the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE), we are committed to providing support and guidance to districts and schools that support how they can best engage and support their students in STEM as they progress through the “Pipeline.”

Pre-K–12 educators, coaches, and administrators are invited to learn more about the resources and strategies available, and examples of efforts already undertaken by some districts around providing high quality, rigorous, standards-aligned math, science, and STEM education for their students. During this session, we will highlight the following initiatives:

• Math and Science & Technology/Engineering (STE) Ambassadors Program
• Statewide Networks for Instructional Support
• High Quality Instructional Materials
• Content Specific Feedback
• Administrator Guidebooks

Participants in this interactive session will be guided through a Digital Equity Walk presenting data in an accessible way, using tools such as Tableau Public, for all to visualize and understand the gender, racial and socioeconomic disparities that exist. Audience members will explore the data individually before collectively discussing implications and identifying solutions to address inequities and improve outcomes. As participants walk and absorb the data, they will respond to the information they find most compelling.

This session will ask participants to reflect on current efforts to expand access to computer science study, where they are being introduced and how to address the fact that in 2016 only 13% of Massachusetts high school students participated in a computer science course and less than 1% took the AP Computer Science exam. Of the 1,151 test takers, 321 were female, 65 were Black, 80 were Hispanic, and 150 were low-income.

Attendees will leave with tangible solutions they can implement and advocate for in their communities to create a pipeline for ALL students to jobs that are now the #1 source of new wages in the country. Participation does not require prior experience with data and is geared toward all audiences.

Get comfortable with the engineering design process in your classroom while allowing students to take the rein with NEED’s “Energy House Challenge” activity. Come try your hand at building an energy house, from the purchasing aspect to installation and efficiency. You’ll be investigating the science behind keeping building occupants healthy and comfortable and our buildings energy efficient. Learn about efficiency, conservation and economic returns by using various materials to insulate a cardboard house and then test its efficiency. An excellent activity in applying engineering principals and problem-solving skills to energy efficiency, while incorporating math with a set budget and cost for materials. Students will be able to describe efficiency and conservation measures for the home and justify why these measures make sense economically. This challenge can be easily differentiated for grades 6-12.

This joint presentation by the Academy of Applied Science and leading invention educators addresses the urgent need for greater diversity among the ranks of leading innovators in the U.S. and partnerships needed between K-12 educators, the higher education community and others to ensure that new learning opportunities are afforded to students in K12 all along the education continuum. Participants will examine invention education as a strategy for attracting more students from underrepresented backgrounds into STEM college/career pathways. The ways educators have structured invention education programs in both formal and informal settings and information about the alignment with state standards will also be shared. We will review a seven week asynchronous online project-based learning pedagogy course preparing educators to begin an invention program. Presenters will discuss strategies used to create partnerships within local communities and beyond to support students’ and teachers’ work. Examples of teachers’ journeys into invention education and what it has meant for students will be explored.

In today’s diverse STEM economy, students pursue a wide variety of careers critical to the scientific enterprise. However, it can be challenging for students to learn about career options due to time, financial and logistical constraints. Here, we present an educational model for experiential learning developed as part of our National Institutes of Health BEST (Broadening Experiences in Scientific Training) grant:  #MicroSim job simulations.  #MicroSims connect students with employers in a meaningful interaction that takes just a few hours. Each simulation activity replicates a task common to the career role, giving the student an opportunity to consider their own career fit. The student shares their job simulation product with an employer in an informational interview or small group discussion setting, helping both student and professional deepen the conversation and build a more meaningful connection. We developed job simulations as a component of our Career Pathways Communities (CPC), which are career-themed learning communities connecting employers and Ph.D. students. We anticipate that the #MicroSims model could be applied to students across STEM disciplines and at various educational levels. In this session, we will share strategies for development and implementation of #MicroSim job simulations and facilitate an audience discussion of potential applications in other contexts. Joining us will be an employer who helped to develop and facilitate a job simulation, and a student who experienced the program, sharing their perspectives about the experience and the benefits for all parties.

Within the K-12 school, we are always looking for ways to engage our families and our community. STEAM activities and events are a great way to bring our families and community members into our schools. By working with the community through local grants and donations, Mary E. Stapleton Elementary has hosted a completely free event that provides hands on activities and experiences in the areas of STEAM. These activities spark interest in our students in the areas of STEAM outside of school. They make connections with the materials they see and use at the event with jobs and interests that they have outside of school. This session will allow us to share our planning processes for a successful event that can be hosted at your school with examples of activities we have done and materials we have purchased that are now available for our classroom teachers to use throughout the school year. We will begin by sharing our planning process and documents that have been used in planning and promoting the event with exit surveys and feedback from families. We will then move to an open exploration where attendees of the session will have the opportunity to try some of the activities for themselves and ask questions about the event. We will share our beginning planning for next year’s event and some of the resources/vendors we have purchased items from or may be purchasing from in the future.

The Readiness through Integrative Science and Engineering (RISE) project seeks to develop ecologically valid, culturally-relevant integrative science, technology and engineering (STE) preschool curriculum components and home-school connections, forged through exploration of family knowledge, activities, and routines related to STE, to support young dual language learning (DLL) children’s school success. A principal innovation of RISE is the process of co-construction, conceptualized as reciprocal and non-hierarchical engagement by researchers, parents and teachers. RISE was developed and initially implemented in seven Head Start classrooms in a large northeastern city, across two programs serving Latino and Chinese heritage families and their DLL children. We will present the RISE Model of Co-Construction, highlighting the Home-School Collaboration (HSC) component. The HSC component, guided primarily by the work of Joseph Tobin and Luis Moll, is built on the idea that schools can leverage families’ unique contributions to children's learning, rather than trying to overwrite these to get children "ready for school." Essential to our reconceptualization of family engagement is that the home-to-school flow of information is just as important as the school-to-home flow, with a particular focus in RISE on STE learning as the family-school bridge. By effectively connecting children’s familiar knowledge and classroom curriculum, teachers can facilitate powerful learning for children from non-dominant groups (Thompson, 2010). We will present our innovative approach, as well as preliminary evidence of its success, and discuss links to early childhood policy and practice.

High School Internships in technology companies are difficult to find. As a result, students often miss out on opportunities to learn, first-hand, about careers in technology. To solve this problem, MITRE and Burlington High School (BHS) collaborated and created a new strategy to provide High School Seniors with technology and career-related experiences in the “Flipped Internship.” Students were given an opportunity to propose and complete a career-related project while remaining in school. Industry mentors met with students once a week, and introduced them to software development methodologies such as Agile and Scrum, development tools like GitHub and Trello, emerging fields like Cybersecurity, and new software development platforms. Additionally, using technologies like Trello and Github enabled both teachers and off-site mentors to have insights into student progress and obstacles. Because the interns remained in the classroom, a large number of students were able to participate and work as colleagues, supporting and learning from each other. Weekly Mentor meetings were scheduled during lunch, and MITRE employees from different departments were able to meet and traveled together, creating a sustained engagement with the school that offered employees both structure and flexibility. Two lead engineers from MITRE’s NextUp group and two computer science teachers from Burlington High School will describe their experiences, share lessons learned, and provide a framework for other schools and businesses who would like to use this model.

Given the theme of “Pipelines to Prosperity” and the importance of cultivating ongoing practices - as opposed to one-time check-off-the-box-and-it’s-done initiatives – we explore some workplace-tested ideas regarding “what works” based on notions of learning as situated in communities of practice (Lave & Wenger, 1991). To turn these theoretical insights into specific actionable programs, we offer an example of blockchain technology which demonstrates the importance of cultivating agile, diverse, entrepreneurial organizations capable of navigating future landscapes in which learning is a lifelong endeavor. To explore how businesses can reimagine their role in broadening participation in digital literacy initiatives, we draw upon insights garnered from the anthropological lens of “figured worlds” (Holland, Lachicotte, Skinner, and Chain, 1998). This session prepares employers of all sizes to leverage the latest research findings to implement digital literacy practices not only for “knowledge workers,” but for all workers. While Massachusetts is known internationally as a hub of technological innovation, many who hail from historically non-dominant communities, e.g. females, Latinx, Black and Brown individuals, and English Learners (ELs), are underrepresented in industries that require STEM knowledge and skills (Landivar, 2013).The reasons for this are myriad: access to resources is often not enough; successful efforts must also address issues related to identity, i.e. not seeing oneself as a “science person” (Carlone, 2004); the “problematic pipeline” (Chapa & De La Rosa, 2006); and sociopolitical practices that embrace deficiency viewpoints (Gutiérrez, 2013). We frame workplace digital literacy initiatives as one way to improve communication, collaboration, innovation, and actualize increased prosperity for all.