STEMteachersNYC

In this workshop, educators will get a taste of the scientific underpinnings of happiness and well-being through a series of mini-lessons and activities. Drawing from the work of Yale’s Dr. Laurie Santos and other positive psychology researchers, the seminar will guide teachers in dispelling common misconceptions about happiness and why our intuitions often lead us astray. Participants will examine cognitive biases that distort our expectations of what brings genuine happiness and life satisfaction. The seminar will then delve into evidence-based strategies for rewiring the brain, grounded in the science of gratitude, neuroscience, and other empirically validated principles for cultivating well-being. Teachers will walk away with practical tools for implementing these happiness-boosting techniques within their personal lives, classrooms, and school communities.

Learn how to use ArcGIS Field Maps (a mobile, map-based, data collection app, free for K-12 teachers) and turn your classroom into a community science and advocacy hub with expert guidance from NYC-based non-profit NYC H2O. Our workshop will introduce you to set up, use, and visualize data using ArcGIS Field Maps and you’ll be provided with innovative ideas (and resources) to engage students in advocating for environmental justice in their school’s community. At the end of the session, best practices, troubleshooting, and ideas for implementation within each participant’s unique context will be discussed and shared along with sample curricula and other resources.

This workshop is designed to introduce educators to Performance Level Descriptors (PLDs) and guide them through the analysis of released cluster questions to prepare students for the upcoming new Earth Science Regents exams. This session explores how to integrate PLDs into curriculum design and assessment, ensuring that lesson plans align with clear performance expectations and the demands of the new exam format. Through interactive discussions and hands-on review of real exam questions, teachers will gain practical strategies to craft engaging lessons and accurate assessments, empowering their students to achieve success on the Regents exams.

As poet George Herbert once stated, “In doing, we learn.” Socratic questioning, in conjunction with place-based learning, provides a unique intersection through which students may demonstrate their knowledge of scientific concepts in a real-world context. In this interactive session, based on the walkSTEM® methodology developed by talkSTEM, a Dallas-based nonprofit that promotes STEM literacy, participants will also review how students may design and create virtual or “in-person” STEM-based walking tours to stimulate inquiry and spark curiosity. Participants will leave with a toolkit that will allow them to integrate this new learning model into their curriculum.

Bring climate change to life through data ‘messages’ collected through polar research. Your students will review evidence from a Greenland research project using hands-on, data-based activities that explore methods for studying past climates. Through this process, they will uncover the history of the Greenland ice sheet over the last 12,000 years and learn to answer larger climate questions.

NASA’s MAVEN Satellite has made amazing discoveries about the “Red Planet.” In this workshop, participate in a matching exercise to identify Martian features that resemble those on Earth. You’ll also learn fascinating facts about Mars and its similarities to our own planet.

How can we design cities that address today’s global challenges while preparing for the future? This hands-on workshop invites educators and students to explore futuristic city planning through problem-solving. Work in teams to design a future city that tackles climate resilience, sustainable energy, equitable transportation, and more. The session concludes with team showcases, feedback, and reflections on integrating these ideas into the classroom.

Invite your students to showcase their learning in a creative, interactive, and innovative way. Have them design their own miniature escape rooms as assessment tools. Workshop participants will learn how to build mini escape rooms as well as how to guide students to create clues and solutions. Our scaffolded “Engineering with Paper” methodology uses just paper, tape and scissors as the construction materials. The simple, accessible, and inexpensive supplies make this project easy to implement in any classroom and for any subject area. Creating table top escape rooms can be an excellent tool for either content assessment or review. Transform your classroom into an adventure zone where your students learn while having a blast!

The workshop aims to empower educators with the knowledge and skills to integrate phenology—a study of seasonal natural phenomena—into their teaching practices. Participants will take part in learning activities that introduce phenology and showcase online community science projects that actively collect data to explore the impact of climate change on the timing of phenological events, highlighting the real-world implications of these changes. Gain new ideas to inspire students to engage in observations related to climate and its environmental impact, foster curiosity about the natural world, and promote ecological literacy.

Have you ever wished students would ask more questions in your science classroom—questions that promote a sense of wonder and foster the desire to learn more? Designed for early and mid-career teachers, this workshop will explore how to use the Question Formulation Technique (QFT) to get all of your students involved in asking (and answering) phenomenon-based questions throughout your units. We will also discuss how the QFT works as a formative assessment and in fulfilling many indicators in the Danielson framework.

This is your chance to get a gentle, hands-on introduction to Quantum Physics, and to the revolutionary ideas that are responsible for amazing technology, now and going forward. You will build your own Quantum Operator, a new, easy-to-use teaching tool based on the behavior of polarized light. You will use Quantum Operators to experiment with quantum states and wavefunctions, superposition, impact of measurement on the system under study, commutability, and probability.

Participants will begin by building a Quantum Operator to take home and to use with students. Printed patterns will permit participants to cut out the proper 2-d shape and then glue it together to form the 3-d hexagonal Quantum Operator. Participants will carry out key experiments in quantum physics and learn how to predict the outcomes using a simplified form of Dirac notation and linear algebra. Discussions will focus on how to answer likely student questions, the relationship with and connections to current physics curricula, evaluation, and any other issues of concern. All participants will take home for free the one or more Quantum Operators that they built during the workshop. Additional patterns and the needed polarizing filters will be available for purchase at cost (about $1 per Operator).