For years, I’ve struggled to figure out how to help my students think like scientists. After all, I gave them plenty of hands-on experiences with STEM Challenges, labs, and more (but who can ever have enough, really?)!

I finally sat down one day and journaled about it. What traits was I really looking for students to emulate? What was so special about the way scientists, and all STEM Pros, engage with their work and the world?

And, so, the STEM Ideals series was born:

Why are STEM Ideals Important?

The ideals found throughout the series aim to identify the special way scientists, and really all STEM Pros, think and behave so we may better practice the traits ourselves – in (and hopefully beyond) STEM classes. For this series, I had three major goals:

Explicitly identify common STEM Ideals for students to explore and study.
Provide quotes and examples in a balanced way by gender and ethnicity so all students can see themselves in these professions.
Make it meaningful and practical for teachers to implement in terms of time and planning.

And it took me awhile to pull everything together, but it was definitely worth all the work! There’s something so satisfying about finding that missing piece of the puzzle — or creating it from scratch, as the case may be!

I have written an in-depth blog post with more details & background on my STEM Challenge site where you can learn more and find a previously recorded Facebook Live from when the resource was launched!

You’ll find things like:

What are the ideals and how were they selected?
Why are they written as verbs rather than nouns (Be Patient vs. Patience)
What’s editable in the resources & what isn’t?
What 3 quotes were the driving force behind the STEM Ideals series?
Why “ideals” vs. traits or characteristics?
What’s meant by STEM Pro?

Y’all, I am truly excited about this. I don’t think there’s anything out there like it, and it’s just what has been missing: explicit, intentional study of the special way that STEM Pros think and behave! Now that it’s done, I wonder why it took me so long to see it’s just what I needed! ?

More STEM Ideals Info., Please!

There are two places to go to learn more:

The in-depth blog post
There are more in-depth video previews for each set and the bundle resource available to view on Teachers Pay Teachers. Click the images below to be head over to TpT to view the video previews and explore the resources. ?