Yes, that is correct. NASA is coming to Panther Creek High School this fall – and their first stop will not be a science classroom. Instead, they will be going to straight to my CTE business and marketing classroom. Why is that you ask? How?
One of my main goals of participating in the Kenan Fellows Program has been to learn how to bring STEM into our CTE curriculum. Unfortunately, the course outlines and guides for most classes I have taught are centered around PowerPoints and worksheets – both of which are kryptonite to a teacher in any school that encourages 21st Century skills and learning. Which is actually ironic given that the materials we are given come from the State curriculum yet there is no way we can use the course guides verbatim, otherwise our students would always be bored and we would be failing them as teachers (not to mention probably looking for a job). Thus, we are left with a bare bone outline of which to help guide us in our own creativity of lesson planning while still achieving the course objectives. Given our lack of inspiring curriculum resources and the ever-present pressure to implement the latest teaching and learning strategies, then how do we bring STEM into CTE?
For me the answer has been eye-opening and inspiring, yet very simple……perspective. I started off blogging on this website early in my experience stating that I felt like a fish out of water. This week I changed the title of my blog to “Adventures of a Businessman in a STEM World”. My Kenan experience has forced me out of my comfort zone and has required me to learn and look at situations from different angles through my business lenses. The results remain to be seen but I believe that my students will certainly benefit from my fellowship as I have numerous ideas and strategies I want to implement in my classroom with more being learned and added daily. The first of which is to understand, that it is OK to step away from PowerPoint and worksheets. Will that take effort and creativity? Yes. Time? Absolutely – more than I can count. However, I believe the experience will be worth it for both my students and myself by focusing on implementing one element at a time. I expect to create an energized business learning lab this coming year.
One of the ways I am learning to include STEM in my teaching is to always ask myself, How do my courses and objectives apply to such topics? Well, as I tell all my students – every single product and service is sold by a business and with that are countless career opportunities. Every business needs a combination of managers, sales people, marketing, service, support, finance, safety, and human resources among many others. Which leads me to another question…..is it not just as important for STEM classes to include CTE components just as it is important for CTE to include STEM? Perhaps that is a topic for a future article.
Thus, I have requested a real NASA space shuttle tile for use in my business and marketing courses. As asked earlier, why? One of plans is for my marketing and intro to business students to study the tile from a different perspective and discover other uses and markets for the space tile here on earth (hoping this covers my global learning component) utilizing the engineering design process. My business law students can explore the intellectual property laws surrounding the tile and any possible licensing opportunities with NASA based on the ideas from their marketing/business classmates (collaboration and cross-curricular = check). Along the way they will all learn about science, technology, engineering, and math associated with the space shuttle tile.
I found the NASA opportunity after being energized and inspired spending time researching various STEM resources online. I ordered the tile from NASA via the GSA for less than $25 (tile is valued at $1,000) after setting up an account and paying online. The funny thing is the tile is actually being shipped from a warehouse just down the street from my high school in my hometown of Manassas, VA. Guess it is a “small world”.
If you would like to order your own, please see the attached instructions. I will plan on following up on this blog in the future.
CLICK HERE for your own piece of a space shuttle!!
NASA Space Shuttle Tiles