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What STEM/STEAM College Readiness Looks Like
As a university professor who engages with high school students at university open houses, I often meet with students interested in entering into engineering, computer science and robotics programs. At a recent open house, one student I met made me think “I wish more students were as prepared as she is to take my classes. This is what college readiness looks like.”
As a K-12 teacher or administrator, I am sure you find yourself thinking about shaping your classrooms to help students achieve college and career readiness by the time they graduate. Here are some key traits of the high school student that I mention above:
1) Experience with computer science related topics, projects and hardware that are being applied in college courses and modern industry
2) The ability to articulate her current experience and explain its specific relevance to the work we do in my lab and in my courses
3) The ability to process the exposure she has had and frame her knowledge in the grand scheme of things
4) An excitement to take her place in higher education combined with humility about the potential for college to expand her knowledge and prepare her for a career
I believe these traits can be developed in the K-12 stage of a student’s life if we provide them the depth, breadth and rigor through a modern pedagogical approach:
- Teacher + student centered pedagogy
- Differentiated learning
- Subject matter treatment grows in depth as students spend more time
- Project-based and collaborative learning
- Foundational concepts within a modern, industry standard environment
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