Engaging the community in STEM classrooms

How do you teach students skill for jobs which do not even exist?  Present day STEM classrooms house the ability for students to obtain skills and credentials to become productive members of society.  However teachers and community share the responsibility to support and inspire students to move further beyond the classroom and better understand the significance of career application to learning.

Today in the engineering lab at Haile Middle School the sheriff’s department demonstrated how robotics is utilized improve their work environment.  The sheriff robot was driven, displayed and discussed.   Students were given the opportunity to make a real life connection between skills learned in the classroom to skills desirable in today’s workforce.  Numerous proficiencies of design, manufacturing and problem solving were conversed between students and a community leader at a high complexity level.

From my experience partnerships between school and community can better promote learning inside STEM classrooms, and students are given the opportunity to connect classroom skills to real life career skills.  These opportunities can be applied going into college or directly into the workforce after high school.

Engineering and Technology Education Advisory Group for Manatee

http://www.linkedin.com/groups/Engineering-Technology-Education-Advisory-Group-4943564/about