Women in STEM
Applying real world applications into students curriculum is imperative to their learning. Real world applications give students a reason to learn the material and it shows them that what they are learning is relevant later in life. This can be a hard thing to incorporate into students learning but in the end it is worth it. It takes time to develop a well rounded plan— which is not something we have much of.
In the current chapter, pre calculus students learned all about triangles and how to find the angles, side lengths and area. One could think “How would I even use this in real life?”. Surveyor’s! They are not always given a square or rectangular plot of land that they need to find the area of. So to find the area they break it up into triangles. Architects redesigning a building who do not have a 50 ft. plus tape measure can use a little bit of math and triangles to find the height of that building all just by standing on the ground. Which is exactly what my students did in their latest lesson!
Each group was assigned different spaces and buildings around campus and sent off to find the area and height. I was able to acquire some distance measuring wheels from the help of NextDoor and a couple amazing women in STEM fields wanting to help. One women who donated is the owner of a surveyors company. She surveys land to know how many units of each crop can be planted and how to irrigate the land properly. I shared her story of how she uses the distance wheels and the progression women have made in the STEM field. Another women who helped out is an architect. She shared that to design modern day buildings she has to know the size of the land she is working with to be able to map out and plan the drawings. I wish I had been able to talk with them sooner because they would have been great real world application guest speakers for the girls to learn from and empower them as women.
Not only did my students have an engaging and interactive project that they got to work on together but they also learned how what they were learning applied to the real world giving it more meaning. Students left class talking about how exciting it was to learn math in real world situations. They felt lucky to be able to engage in the math they were learning in an interactive way. I was overwhelmed with joy as my students were excited to learn math and about amazing women working in the STEM field.
I did not see your blog until I posted mine. What you are doing is so cool. I worked my way through college doing land surveying. I learned quite a bit about distance and angles doing that job. My son is a heavy construction supervisor. He uses lots of calculus in his job.
Students so appreciate learning about topics they might "really use." Knowing it intellectually is one thing. Seeing it in reality is quite another. It looks like we are on the same track here.