Michelle Stie, vice president of teaching and learning for the National Math + Science Initiative, is a classroom teacher by heart and training and was a teacher for 18 years before joining NMSI 10 years ago. She recalls attending professional development events where she was introduced to NMSI’s resources and instruction. “Their resources made a profound difference in how I approached teaching, especially for students who had been instructionally marginalized.”
Stie leads the team that develops NMSI’s STEM educator professional development solutions and programs. They recently developed a curriculum with Deloitte around its SMART Rover project, which will bring SMART Rovers exclusively to Title 1 schools and train hundreds of teachers how to use the rovers to teach math and science standards. “This will hopefully excite students about engineering, robotics, and coding, and our training will help teachers effectively integrate it into their classrooms, engaging students in all the possibilities of STEM,” Stie says.
The team also worked with the Lyda Hill Foundation to create discussion guides for its If/Then ambassadors to provide middle and high school students with positive images of women in STEM. “Our goal is to help teachers become invitational in their approach to STEM, especially for students who don’t see themselves as STEM students,” Stie says.
Under Stie’s leadership, the team also developed the concept for NMSI’s New Teacher Academy, designed to provide training and support for teachers in the first three years of their careers. “There has been a lot of pressure on teachers coming out of the pandemic, and teachers are resigning at alarming rates,” Stie says. “We are partnering with universities to take recent teacher graduates and assigning them a mentor and a community where they feel support as they meet those first- and second-year obstacles so they feel positive about teaching and stay in the profession. NMSI is committed to teachers as they work to support students becoming more successful.”
National Math + Science Initiative
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