Zarina Qadir

Personal Manifesto: My STEM experience and learning

advancement
Education has been a very important issue and focus by the communities,
parents, and nation. Teaching profession is not the nine-to five job only, but it
requires continuous professional development, learning new instructional
strategies to enhance the teachers knowledge, and adhering to the rules
and procedures. We are always on the go to improve our instructional skills
to improve. Improving our instructional skills provides opportunities to us to
prepare our students to be life-long learners and have successful careers.
Over the years of my teaching career, I have gone through numerous
workshops, professional developments, and educational courses. I have
written several academic and technology grants to provide my students the
most available resources to enhance their academic skills. My intent to
Participating in the STEM Project was to enhance my math, science, and
technology skills that I can utilize in my classroom.
The STEM Project, surely, is a unique learning experience for me. All the
activities that we have completed in the STEM Project are very practical. I
have integrated several of these activities in my units and lessons.
Consequently, my students are excited and inspired whenever, I begin a new
unit and embed STEM related activities in my units. My focus is to develop
students higher order thinking, inquiry, and interest in math, science and
technology. Moreover, I have developed my personal skills in various areas.
For example, I have developed confidence, skills, and questioning strategies
conducting interview. Similarly, the book Rocking the Boat is has increased
my horizon of thinking as a tempered radical and assessing others positions
in the school. The STEM Project was very helpful for me in learning and
getting hands-on for developing my own website and digital makeover. This
was my first exciting experience of developing my own web page.
Reflection and Future Planning
My plan is to continue focusing on implementing and integrating math,
science, and technology in my future lesson units. I wrote a few grants to
purchase kindle and nook books for my students. I have planned to present
these ideas to the school administration to have the eBooks and laptops for
all students. I do share my missionary thinking with my colleagues and the
school administration. I have assumed the leadership role in working with my

colleagues in order to implement various STEM Projects school-wide to

enhance our students learning. As mentioned earlier in my goal settings, I
have planned to involve three or four teachers of my school and facilitate
them to integrated STEM activities in my school during the forthcoming
school year. I am planning to keep networking with the STEM team and
facilitators to keep abreast of new ideas, activities, and programs, especially
related to math, science, and technology.