Degree (college): MEd, Curriculum and Instruction: STEM

ESC Board Role: Treasurer

What do you believe about Children Engineering: 

I look around the classroom at the eager faces of my kindergarten students and wonder what the world will look like in 13 years when they are graduating from high school. In their lives, they will have to understand and use technologies and systems that have not even been dreamt of as they sit in my classroom today - I must help them learn techniques that will prepare them.

STEM education is a critical component of that preparation. Technology and engineering are the core of STEM, bringing together and putting into action the concepts learning in math, science and other subjects. I work to challenge my students every day with ideas and problems that stretch their abilities without overwhelming them so that even the kindergarten and first graders can strive to meet criteria and stay within constraints of a design problem, ‘try and try again’ with iterative design, then feel the joy of creating a successful design. I challenge my students to deconstruct and understand function to build an understanding of how to create function. Real-world problems and meeting human needs and wants is integral to engineering design; helping students see that they can help shape our future, their ideas, knowledge and passion can solve real problems.