Citizen STEM educators needed!

My 2024 goals include a pivot from resource teaching STEM to pursuit as a full time Educational Tech/Research career commitment. And right on the heals of this goal, this week's Education Week article, "STEM Jobs Aren't Students' First Choice. More Hands On Experience Might Help Experts Say  supports the need for those of us in the field to make STEM more "real" and "achievable" to young learners as viable future career options when they plan courses of study down the road. I mean, that's the point of all these one-off K-12 STEM events we all spend so much time planning and teaching, right? In summary the article closes with:

"The findings point to the fact that despite students’ interest in STEM, they’re not finding viable pathways to those careers, or something prevents them from pursuing those careers, and we need to understand what those barriers are and address them,” said Maud Abeel, a director for Jobs for the Future, a national nonprofit that develops programs and public policies focused on boosting students’ college and career readiness."

What can we do? In my humble opinion:

We need to professionalize the career path for STEM citizen educators to make the very transition I'm undertaking! In my dedicated job hunt of late, I find absolutely no consistent strategy schools use to define such a role, much less incentivize folks with these talents. Lots of volunteer opportunities, very little, if any actual paid positions beyond $18/hr positions/event opportunities without insurance benefits. Keep in mind, STEM professionals start at $40/hr and up in their professions of training, many of us with advanced degrees.

Clarify/simplify the alternatives to STEM teaching credential path. One locality advertised their STEM position as a vocation education path, others as a librarian, mostly though, schools deferring to their science teachers or after school clubs to fill this STEM skills need.

Kids say they want to "code", but the reality is that we need citizen educators to demonstrate and shadow the thinking skills it takes to script code for their projects beyond slick graphic and audio rich drag and drop coding platforms, that frankly, bear little resemblance to what emerging integrated development environments are like in the real STEM world.

We have a LONG way to go in the real STEM world to make careers attractive beyond at best, a traditional young male reality, or at it's worst, employment outsourced to low wage countries that it largely represents today.