Amelia Radziszewska Capstone

A lot of students choose not to pursue STEM careers due to the math involved with it. Intimidated by calculus and higher-level maths, many students do not choose to pursue these careers. This mini course was designed to bridge the gap between classroom math and industry math. I designed this mini course so that students could step into the roles of various careers, such as engineers, scientists, or architects.

My mini course ran from February 11th to April 8th, and over the course of these 8 weeks, students learned to do math and act in the roles of engineers, game analysts, forensic scientists, architects, among others. I researched and reflected on ways that I can make this mini-course more interactive and less hard to understand. Some activities included: Elephant toothpaste, paper airplanes, building towers, calculating game statistics, and more! Overall, these activities helped to bridge the gap between the math classes that they take right now and seeing the math truly in action. The kids also played a large role in deciding what careers they wanted to engage in. At the end of each session, I would ask what they would want to learn next week, and I would try to incorporate it somehow into next week’s lesson.

Overall, this process taught me that in the classroom collaboration is one of the most important skills to make it a place where people enjoy learning. I hope to continue expanding STEM education in the future.