Each week, PA Teacher of the Year Joe Welch will be sharing his experiences and thoughts as we all work through the disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. His posts are cross-posted from his personal blog, Inclined to Teach.

As some teachers are about to officially begin their continuity of education plans and some of us about about to enter into our third week of distance learning, or some name thereof, I feel that the emotion that I have battled most for two weeks was the feeling of being overwhelmed.

For me, the most stressful time of the school year had been the first weeks of school.  There would be level of wanting everything to be just perfect, long hours each day trying to learn about your new students, setting up locker tags to make students feel comfortable, answering questions, and never really knowing where the next meeting invite would come from.

After experiencing two weeks of virtual learning, the emotions that I personally have experienced have been very similar.  You think that you have a handle on what the next day is going to look like and you may even have a task list ready to go.  But, here comes the next Zoom invite.  Here comes the next e-mail that will “just take a few seconds to respond to”, so you go to it and put down what you had been working on.  Here comes that time when you sit down to relax and a student reaches out with an email.  This has been the new first two weeks of school, when hours of when teaching time ends and when family time begins. 

My own lists have gotten continually longer each day, and no matter what I complete, I replace a task with two more.  It is a mix of the movie Groundhog Day and the feeling of running in quicksand. Having two children of my own learning at home has certainly compounded this, but, the first thing to be crossed off my list to manage tasks has been diet and exercise.  Although essential to mental health, it is just too easy to say “I’ll deal with that later.”
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So how have I started to manage this feeling of being overwhelmed:

• Get outside and exercise.  Even it is raining.  Write it down on your list. Do it.
• This weekend, I decided to put my phone away for the day.  Let that e-mail go.  Let that text go for a little bit.  It will be there when you get back.  Find some time to do something you enjoy.
• Make lists.  This is easy, right?  But, visually, this has been important to me to actually see that I’ve been making progress on getting things done.
• Attempt to set up a virtual meeting with your students.  That single hour that I spent doing that this week was an hour of normalcy and routine that I missed.  Students laughed.  I laughed.  It was great.  If you can set these up, go for it.

Have you ever noticed what the scientists look like in the cartoons?   You know - those crazy white-haired guys? Even better, have you ever done a Google search of “famous scientists” or “famous engineers”? Go ahead - I will wait…

. . .What did you see?  Yep, for the most part you saw those same old white-haired guys.  Stereotypes generally do come from somewhere. However, stereotypes lead to some problems with students who don’t fit the mold.  Is STEM open to someone who looks different than the stereotype? Is there something we can do to intervene so that anyone can believe they can be a STEM professional?  How can we encourage women and minorities to embrace science?   

One program that seeks to encourage more women is the The STEP Up program, sponsored by the American Association of Physics Teachers.  STEP Up is a research-based set of lessons and practices designed for physics teachers to incorporate in the classroom to help encourage more women to consider earning an undergraduate degree in physics.  Many of the practices from STEP Up would work equally well to encourage other underrepresented students populations to consider any type of STEM career. The STEP Up project lays out “Every Day Actions for Educators” to give classroom teachers ideas on ways to make the STEM class more inclusive for everyone.  

“Every Day Actions” spells out ideas about best ways to interact with students either individually or in a group.  In addition, there are recommendations on best ways to facilitate group work and ideas to consider when planning lessons and assessing students.  Together, these research-based actions will create a better and equitable environment for all students.

When planning lessons, the teacher sets the tone for positive attitudes towards STEM.  Make sure everyone can participate, collaborate, and receive attention in the class. Find topics that resonate with students’ values, experiences, and interests.  Unfortunately, female interests are less likely to be incorporated into STEM lessons, so find a way to add content about women’s sports or activities. At the same time, females tend to be more anxious about getting good grades.  Help your students with growth mindset ideas that lower grades do not mean failure. Always ask yourself if your lessons have a wide variety of contexts and are equitable.   

When interacting with students, always encourage and explicitly reinforce your students’ abilities.  Recognize students when they work hard, even if they don’t quite succeed. I love to tell my students to “Fail Boldly” to help them overcome being discouraged by set-backs.  Support new opportunities and learn what students value so you can tie your STEM lessons to your student’s values and passions. 

Next, make the group work about equality.  Make sure each student has an opportunity to be an active participant and contribute to group discussions.  Research shows that female students are often marginalized in STEM settings due in part to having less experience with the various tools and techniques.  Make sure you choose your groups wisely and scaffold group collaborations so that everyone contributes and has a voice.

Finally, be an advocate for your students outside of the classroom.  Research shows that students who persist in STEM careers are influenced by others beside the teacher.  Unfortunately, some students do not get an opportunity to build relationships with STEM professions because they do not have access through family or community connections.  Reach out to other teachers, counselors and parents to leverage their help to find STEM opportunities to help build STEM relationships for your students. Look for activities for your students outside of school like coding competitions, Saturday science at museums, or open houses at observatories.  Even visits to state parks might bring your students in touch with biologists and astronomers. Bring guest speakers into the classroom either in person or through the wonder of technology. These are just a few ways to advocate for your students.

If every teacher who interacts with students in math, science, technology and engineering would add these “Every Day Actions” into their STEM classrooms, we can begin to overcome some of those stereotypes about what a scientist looks like. If you are interested in knowing more about the STEP up lessons, go to the https://engage.aps.org/stepup/home to download the lessons and practices. Our goals should be to have the graduating STEM professional look more like the whole USA population spectrum.  Then, we will know we have succeeded when the scientists in the cartoons are women and the Google search engine finds a kaleidoscope of engineers.  ​