Very informative and forward thinking. ! Well done.

Aloha Brain,

Thank you for viewing the video and the positive feedback :) 

Very nice video that illustrates your project's committment to a much larger view of STEM as a construct that has meaning within place and culture. 

I want to followup on Francene's questions about working with schools and youth. As teachers in your program develop their perspectives and pedagogies for using STEMS^2 in their classrooms, do you have any insight into how this approach may be transformative (or not) for students as they experience disciplinary content? I imagine the students are still in pretty traditional courses that treat different aspects of STEM seperately in a course structure (e.g., biology, geometry, statistics, chemistry, biotechnology). What may be happening in schools to help there be a cohesive STEMS^2 approach across courses?

Hi Francene and Hollylynne,

I'm a STEMS^2 graduate and I'm currently teaching in a 4/5th grade combination class as well as I've taught in a third grade classroom 2 years ago. I think the success of STEMS^2 is the same as it's challenges. In providing opportunities for students to learn about their place through multiple perspectives (STEMS^2), many teachers are supportive of having every aspect included into the curriculum, but may not have the content knowledge to transition from subject to subject. I myself am not an expert at all disciplines, but what I think is special about what I learned from STEMS^2 is that I need to curate the overall student experience more carefully. I need to leverage the community resources, often experts in their fields that have a strong sense of responsibility to their place and good ability to communicate that to kids, and provide space for my students to interact with them. I don't have to be the expert in all content, but I think it's my job to help students see that these contents are separate as well as connected. We often have discussions about identifying individual content aspects and putting them together to see how everything is interconnected. What's even better is when I can have discussion about Hawaiian culture as a way to learn all of these disciplines. I have 9 year olds who are interviewing national oceanographers about the conflicts between culture and science as well as learning about how global fish populations are calculated for the sake of managing global consumption. It's really hard to get moments like that for every kid, but when you provide a more inclusive integrated curriculum, it allows for all kids to find a space to develop exactly where they're at and where their needs/interests are.

As for a larger challenge I face, I think convincing other educators to trust that they don't have to be the expert is very hard. I may not be an expert at every aspect of STEM, but I can make connections here and there to allow doorways for students to make connections, which has been hard for me to communicate to other educators. I think there is still a lot of work to be done in helping educators bridge disciplines and be explicit about these connections. I currently work on a team that has dived right into it and see the value of what STEMS^2 is trying to do for students and the over separation of these body's of knowledge. We're still at the beginning of what this ideally looks like, but I feel really good about what I do when I have Hawaiian and non-Hawaiian students who value themselves and see themselves becoming more scientific, mathematical, cultural, and the like. Most of all, I'm really appreciative that they value multiple perspectives even if they're opposing perspectives and/or seemingly disjointed concepts.

Hopefully this helps.

Aloha Francene and Hollylynne,

Thank you so much for your comments and questions. Francene, I watch your video a well and love you project. I feel like there are a number of space of overlap that I would love to discuss is you are interested. 

In specific response to your questions about transfer to schools and students, I'll answer that in two parts. As for impact, translation of STEMS^2 to the classroom on the part of teachers, while we find the majority are able to bring portions of the construct into their classrooms the degree to which they are able to truly transform their spaces varies by context.  Early on we started to recognize that part of the construct needed to include advocacy as a specific pillar and to spend time building educators capacity to serve as agents of change in their teaching and learning spaces. We also require all participants to design and implement a STEMS^2 unit (we do this both in the masters' program and when offering PD not connected to the masters' program). The designing is meant to develop educators' identities as "critical curriculum consumers" and implementation allows educators to feel all the challenges and joy that come from working within a STEMS^2 framework. We find if they have space to "play" with STEMS^2 curriculum supported as a participant in the masters' or in a PD they are significantly more likely to continue implementation upon completion of their STEMS^2 experience. Educators (both formal and informal) have reported and demonstrated remarkable transformation in their teaching practice though that has come with struggle. The STEMS^2 construct does not easily fit in the design of the traditional school day and often requires advocacy to make work. Some teachers, such as Stacy who commented above create space for their practice by working with peers to creating "teaching teams" even if the school does not officially have teams. Other work with their administration to create access to the mental, emotional and physical spaces required to teach from a STEMS^2 lens. How this is done varies across contexts but was is pivotal for transformation in the network. Educators cannot just complete a masters or PD and then left on their own to figure out. We are working on building a robust network of educators, administrators, policy makers, community members, cultural practitioners, students, etc.…It is this network that both in the short and long-term are allowing for true transformation. I am happy to plan a time to talk more about more specific examples how STEMS^2 has transferred into a variety of teaching and learning space and/or figure out a plan for how you can talk with some of the educators who are applying the STEMS^2 construct. As for impact on students, that is newer data that we are collecting and is one of the next growth spaces for us as we try and measure impact. At the moment we have teacher reported data that indicates application of STEMS^2 pedagogy has resulted in lower behavioral issues, increased student attendance and increased student engagement. We have not yet studied “academic impacts” such as test scores and grades and would love to do a more robust longitudinal study of impact on students over time.

Thanks for sharing your beautiful and needed work, Tara. Stacy, I enjoyed reading your perspective and agree regarding expert difficulty. Visit here, if you would like to share more of your story.

Aloha Patti,

Thank you for taking the time to view our video and for your kind feedback. Development of STEMS^2 has truly been a fantastic journey filled with joy and a lot of learning. 

Hi Cara,

Thank you for your comments. I watched your project video. It's really exciting what you and your project team are doing. Creating space for community voice and knowledge is so powerful and so important. The types of civic engagement our educators engage in varies depending on their interests and community needs. As part of the STEMS^2 masters program students do a year long advocacy project. As part of that project students have focused on issues related to reduction of food waste, water rights, access to meaningful after school programs, food sustainability and food sovereignty, etc... The kinds of civic engagement our educators undertake in connection with their teaching depends often on the community partner they collaborate with and of course the needs of their communities. Applying STEMS^2 pedagogy teachers have designed units focused on native plant restoration, native plant and fish identification and stream restoration, agricultural engineering with indigenous and western tech, exploration of sustainable food crops such ‘ulu (breadfruit), etc... 

These engagements get incorporated into our program in a number of ways. In some cases, students' work has introduced the program to new community partners and those partnerships build into longterm relationships and projects that future student work on. In other cases, students' build long-term relationships with community partners they met as part of the STEMS^2 masters or PD experience and those relationship get incorporated into their teaching and learning spaces. One of my favorite part of the STEMS^2 construct is our pillar of "A‘o" (reciprocal teaching and learning). In all moments we all get to be teachers and learners and thus are always learning and growing. 

Hi Lori,

Thank you so much for your kind comment. 

Hi Ann,

Thank you for your questions. A very important part of the STEMS^2 construct is the network so we make a lot of effort to follow-up and engage with participants well beyond the completion of their masters' or their PD experience. This happens in a number of ways. We designed an annual conference called the STEMS^2 Symposium where alumni, community partners, all interested participants come together to share their work. This year the symposium is on-line via zoom on June 25th and June 26th from 8:30am - 12pm HST. You are more than welcome to join :). We send out a regular network newsletter where we share what people in the network are doing. We ask alumni to contribute updates from their teaching and learning spaces as part of the newsletter. We also host a weekly pau hana (happy hour) on weds. where network members (mostly masters' alumni) meet-up and share challenges they are facing and exciting work they are up to. We also do the traditional end of program surveys. Through these avenues we have been able to measure the impact on teacher participants though my next step is to take the time to collectively analyze our five years of masters' program data to gain an understanding of longitudinal impact on teachers. I am still working on designing the study to meaningfully measure impact on their students beyond the teacher reported data we have. I am open to any ideas you might have. 

Thanks for sharing these examples of formal and informal (pau hana) ways that the teachers can gather for PD/mentoring/social support. I imagine these are very helpful for sustained engagement!

Hi Aramati,

Thank you for your comment. Two keys to the holistic nature of our work is the fundamental grounding in sense of place and our connection with community partners. STEMS^2 is a "multiple minds" construct that requires collective thinking and engagement. This multiple minds design forces us to function from multiple perspectives/lenses or "makawalu" (eight eyes) at one time and creates for the holistic programming. Planning is a lot to coordinate and is not always easy but the outcomes are well worth the effort. 

Thanks for the response Tara and for explaning how you ground your work in the 5 pillars that was exactly what I was asking when i said protocols. 

In our own project, where one goal is to build Professional Learning Communities with the teachers who have participated in our Professional Development workshops, we have been stymied by school system attrition after our workshops, curricular "dissonance" when the school system made top-down curricular changes, and overwork--just the everyday demands put on every teacher.  Getting that next level in the network to a sustainable level has been difficult.  Ideas from your project might help.