It’s OK To Fail: How Indiana Teachers are Rethinking STEM

Chalkbeat Jun 19, 2018
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It’s OK To Fail: How Indiana Teachers are Rethinking STEM Giving Compass

Giving Compass’ Take:

· In Kraig Kitts’ class, failing is part of the learning process. The Lilly Experience for Teachers in STEM, a project by Kitts, is a workshop for teachers for applying STEM curriculum to the real world. In a report by Chalkbeat, Kitts discusses the focus of the Lilly Experience and why it is important for students to apply their education to the real world and learn new skills.

· How does this approach get more students involved in STEM material? How is STEM education preparing students for their futures?

· Read about strategies to create a culture around STEM education. 

In Kraig Kitts’ biology classes, it’s OK to fail.

“That’s science. That’s the nature of it,” said Kitts, a science teacher at Center Grove High School. “Sometimes we don’t know. As teachers, we have a lot of pressures that everything works, every time, 100 percent.”

This is the message Kitts wants to send to his students. It’s also the message he wants to relay to other Indiana teachers.

Kitts is the mastermind behind the Lilly Experience for Teachers in STEM, a two-day workshop for teachers of STEM — or science, technology, engineering, and math — designed to redefine the field by connecting math and science curriculum to real-world applications.

He interned in Eli Lilly and Company’s structural biology department last summer through a special program for science teachers. As an educator, Kitts was shocked to see how his own classroom lessons reflected in the daily jobs of Lilly’s scientists and engineers.

He immediately wanted to share the real-world applications of STEM with other educators — and his students, too

Read the full article about applying STEM to the real world by Shelby Mullis at Chalkbeat.

If you are looking for more articles and resources for Education, take a look at these Giving Compass selections related to impact giving and Education.

  • This article is deemed a must-read by one or more of our expert collaborators.
    Click here for more.
    Successfully Building Outcome-oriented Community Partnerships

    Giving Compass' Take: · Writing for Ballmer Group, Jeff Edmondson talks about the StrivePartnership and how the StriveTogether approach allows communities to collaborate and create solutions to their hardest challenges.  · Why is it important for a community to come together to develop solutions for local challenges? How can philanthropists support community engagement and development? · Here's more on StriveTogether and quality collective impact. In 2006, more than 300 local organizations in the Cincinnati and northern Kentucky area came together to improve outcomes for the children in their community. The StrivePartnership included leaders from education, business, nonprofit, and civic communities who set a goal of creating greater equity, especially for children of color. Together they selected milestones and tracked progress against key indicators across life stages. After the first five years, nine percent more children were ready for kindergarten, for example, and college enrollment had jumped 10 percent. By 2010, the lessons learned translated into a method for building outcome-oriented community partnerships – different sectors coming together to use data to make decisions around measurable results with equity as the overarching north star. Other communities embraced the method and worked to turn it into a framework that became the foundation for a broader national network. Now StriveTogether has engaged nearly 70 community partnerships that reach more than 13 million children. Over half of these children – almost 9 million – are children of color. At Ballmer Group, we believe communities are the agents of change. Our approach is to support organizations that work to integrate all systems in a community needed to improve results, especially for people of color and families living in poverty. We invested in StriveTogether in 2017 to help them provide more resources to communities they have identified as working particularly well. Read the full article about StriveTogether by Jeff Edmondson at Ballmer Group.

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