December 1, 2022
Three new guides from the Voya Foundation’s National STEM Fellowship and the National Network of State Teachers of the Year give educators ideas on how to provide high-quality STEM career engagement experiences for their students. The guides come as jobs in STEM fields are expected to grow twice as fast as those in non-STEM fields, and millions of STEM jobs are expected to go unfilled in the near future, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics.
How can teachers invite STEM professionals into the classroom to have authentic engagement with their students that would fuel their interest in those careers, help them understand what they need to do to be successful, and reveal career opportunities perhaps they have never heard of before? Those are the questions that led Voya STEM fellows to develop the STEM Career Engagement Guides for elementary, middle school, and high school levels.
The guides provide steps toward intentionally incorporating STEM career possibilities into the classroom. They offer educators a path to find entry points, no matter where they are with technology, where they are feeling comfortable in engaging a guest speaker, and how to prepare students to work with a guest speaker.