STEM Professionals in the Classroom

We expect you to prepare an approximately 30-minute presentation about your career, the questions/problems you are tackling now, and the challenges facing the future of your field. We encourage you to be as interactive as possible. For example, you may bring tools of your trade to show and share, show pictures of your workplace, share your career journey, ask questions and allow for student discussion, show real data and ask students to interpret them, do a brief demo of an age-appropriate scientific concept that relates to your job or industry, or engage the class in a hands-on, inquiry-based activity. Your visit is meant to get students excited about the work that you do, about the unanswered questions and problems in your field, and about the possibility of a career in your field. Emphasize how your work can potentially affect the future of our world. Help students see how the STEM concepts they are learning in school are applied in the real world. Avoid doing a demo/activity that is unrelated to your field. ASF staff are happy to help you develop a successful visit – please contact i[email protected]. It is vital that you contact the teacher ahead of time to clarify expectations, to share concerns, and to better understand the students’ prior knowledge and expected learning outcomes.

See Speaker Guide for helpful information including what to do before/during/after your visit, helpful tips, and a sample lesson outline.

As a STEM professional in the Imagining the Future program, your objectives are to increase students’  a) knowledge of the unique science and technology coming out of Atlanta universities and businesses, b) interest in STEM careers, and c) understanding of the unsolved problems and unanswered questions facing STEM industries. See our Speaker Guide for guidance on achieving these objectives.

Complete the online registration form. See link above.

All classroom visits should occur on March 7, 2019. If the teacher is unable to accommodate your visit on that day, you may reschedule for another date. Please notify us if that is the case.

Throughout Atlanta metro area. There will be an area on the registration form to indicate the counties to which you are willing to travel. We will do our best to accommodate all requests.

Classes will range from kindergarten to twelfth grade. Upon registration, you may specify your preferred age group(s).

Classes typically run fifty minutes. We suggest preparing a thirty minute talk/activity, leaving plenty of time for questions and interactions with students. However, please discuss these details with your matched teacher.

There is a part of the registration form where you can tell us how much time you can contribute. Some schools are able to bring classes to an auditorium to hear a single presentation, but many teachers work with more than one class throughout the day and would be very grateful to have STEM professionals talk with several consecutive classes of students. It is likely that the teacher will want you to visit more than one classroom, so that all of their students may benefit from your visit. Please do the best you can to accommodate; however, we understand the limitations of your time off of work. ASF is doing its best to manage teachers’ expectations on this front. Ultimately, it is up to you and the teacher to work out the details.