STEM person of the week volunteers wanted

We know that children (and adults) often have a stereotypical view of scientists and people who work in STEM.

Here at NUSTEM, we’ve created a simple resource which allows teachers to address these stereotypes with their students. STEM Person of the Week is a five week teacher-led activity. Each week the teacher ‘introduces’ a new STEM person to their class using postcards or posters. The teacher ask the children to think and talk about the attributes that the person on the poster shows. These attributes are chosen from NUSTEM’s 16 STEM attributes.  This helps the children to identify attributes that they have that they share with someone who works in STEM.

Each set of five postcards is chosen so that they present a range of different careers and education levels, as well as diversity in age, gender and ethnicity.

We want to create two new sets of STEM Person of the week postcards and are looking for volunteers.

Chemistry STEM Person of the Week

The first set will be used with two secondary schools in the North East that are taking part in the project ‘Careers learning in Chemistry’, funded by the Royal Society of Chemistry.  For this set, we’re looking for people who have a career that uses Chemistry in any form.  You don’t have to have ‘chemist’ in your job title.

Climate Action STEM Person of the Week

The second set is being created jointly with our friends at the Great Science Share for Schools.  On the 14th June, primary schools are encouraged to get their pupils sharing science – particularly through science investigations.  The theme for the Great Science Share this year is Climate Action.  For this set we’re looking for people who work in STEM and who’s work is linked to climate action.  It could be people who work in renewable energy technologies or who are working to improve the climate and environment.

If you think that you and your job match either of these, and would like to help showcase STEM careers to children, then please get in touch.

All you have to do is answer some questions about yourself and your job, and share a photograph of you at work.  You don’t have to go into schools.

For more details contact Carol at carol.davenport@northumbria.ac.uk