STEM Ambassador Retreat

Hello everyone! My name is Eleanor Scott with the West Tennessee STEM Hub. I am a sophomore in Electrical Engineering, and I, along with my other STEM Ambassadors, am looking forward to the new school year. With school starting all over Tennessee, the West Tennessee STEM Hub is working hard to prepare for the upcoming year and all that it entails. On top of general STEM education in the school systems, several spring competitions are in full swing. It falls on the STEM Ambassadors to be ready for anything. The Spring Retreat is one of the many ways that we use to achieve that level of preparedness.

On the first day of training, STEM Ambassadors were engaging in our Spring Retreat, learning more about both teaching techniques and Vex Robotics. On Thursday, the REC Foundation came to instruct the STEM Hub on Vex Robotics competitions, rules, and the new Vex IQ slapshot. Partnering with the Jackson area high school students and teachers, we worked to learn more about the new competitions and the logistics of judging and refereeing the competitions. The STEM Hub is excited about aiding schools with projects, supplying kits, and judging the amazing robotics that the students are involved in.

               For the second day of training, we focused more on various teaching techniques that we are looking to showcase more often. Aimee Tate with Defined: The Authority on Applied Learning met with the STEM Ambassadors to introduce us to the teaching practices and resources that are available to us. Defined is about educating students through project-based learning, which has been shown to produce better test results and critical thinking skills. Through Defined Learning’s performance task questions, we asked what is the goal, what is our role, who is our audience, what is our situation, and what are the needed standards that our work will be judged by. It was an interactive approach to teaching children that we look forward to introducing to teachers and classrooms. We are excited about everything that this year will bring for STEM Ambassadors.