KIDS Consortium and Maine Mathematics and Science Alliance: STEM & Service-Learning

Check out the latest news from KIDS!

Follow this link to learn about and download a free copy of the just released Integrating Scientific Practices and Service-Learning: Engaging Students in STEM!

Seven Misconceptions about How Students Learn: Game-Changers for Authentic Learning

Just read another article that hit home for me.   “Seven Misconceptions about How Students Learn,” written by Valerie Strauss at the Washington Post.

It discusses the misconceptions that many people believe about education, that are blocking true learning.  Over the past few decades we have learned a lot about how students learn and these misconceptions don’t fit with the science.

Here is the list of misconceptions and Strauss’s comments on each.

A Few More STEM Links Worth a Look

KIDS Consortium and the Maine Math and Science Alliance are collaborating on another two-part workshop in a couple of weeks for a group of out-of-school teachers and in-school teachers in Massachusetts called, Prepare and Inspire! Strategies for Blending Research-Based STEM Instruction with High Quality Service-Learning. The collaboration between KIDS and MMSA had yielded some great work over the last couple of years. You can learn more by visiting the Youth as Citizen Scientists: Data, Insight and Action through Service-Learning. While doing some prep for the workshop over the last couple of days I came across a few new links to STEM related information—all the links are relevant to integrating STEM and service-learning.

Links to get your STEM fix:

Sure, Absolute Power Corrupts, but Empowering Others…Absolutely Different Results: Try Service-Learning to Cultivate a Commitment To Learning by Youth and Adults

 The seventh 21^st Century Skill supported by service-learning:

“Cultivate an ongoing commitment to learning.”

Cultivate—I appreciate the verb in this context and what it connotes. There is a metaphor for gardening suggested—for nurturing and growing and stewardship—that I think is appropriate.

So how and why does service-learning cultivate that commitment? As usual, lots of answers to a question like that.

Top Reasons Service-Learning Promotes Being Creative and Entrepreneurial: 21st Century Skills In Action

Primarily, it’s because the answers are not in the back of the book.

There. That is why service learning develops the 21^st Century Skills of being creative and entrepreneurial. (click for the list of seven 21st Century Skills students develop and demonstrate through service learning.) Giving students the freedom to dream of new solutions encourages them to be creative and entrepreneurial.

For example, when a class of middle school students started to investigate the amount of waste generated in their cafeteria by sorting and weighing the contents of the trash bags—don’t worry, everyone wore gloves—they had no idea, and neither did their teacher, that by the next school year their efforts would eliminate foam lunch trays and replace them with compostable trays. They didn’t know that compostable trays were even available. Check the link and see the path they paved to make it happen.

So there. One example of service learning promoting creativity and entrepreneurship…

But there is something nagging at you…you’re thinking that there is more, right?

I agree.