I have wanted to be a high school teacher for as long as I have wanted to pursue teaching as a career. My love for teaching initially developed when I was in high school and had amazing teachers that transformed the way I learned and approached education. As a result, I have always wanted to teach high school science and math.

STEM club is an after-school club for children ages 6-12 who want to learn about science, technology, engineering and math. It was a wonderful volunteer experience that I participated in through the last year of my undergrad and then through the first two semesters of the education program.

Stem club came up as a unique opportunity for me to do some volunteer work and and gain some experience working with younger age groups. I have done work coaching and doing different teaching with younger ages but I really liked the addition of stem being the primary goal of this club and it seemed like a really great program to be volunteering during my undergrad.

There are so many things I learned during my time with stem club but one of the biggest things that will always stick with me is how much I grew in my enjoyment and comfort working with younger grades and age groups. Some special memories include having a kid run up to me and hug me and greeting every kid during check-in. It was also a distinct pleasure to see how creative young minds are and how they approach challenges.

Kids are so creative when they are at play. I have seen the same group of kids use Magna-tiles to work on towers, roads, rainbows, 2D shapes, and 3D shapes. I have watched students test out how different colours combine when you lay one coloured transparent tile over another. I have seen kids work collaboratively to combine materials from different kits, such as using Magna-tiles to extend or complete a marble run. I enjoyed watching the learning that happened through free play and exploration of STEM-based materials.

Some other things that stem club opened me up to were the importance of snacks (we had snack breaks every session), differentiation, encouraging collaboration and teamwork in younger students, allowing students to choose their own challenges and activities to work with, making complex ideas accessible for a younger audience, utilizing visuals, making things like memorization fun, and some classroom management skills. I had a wonderful team of volunteers that I worked with and I developed great relationships with both my teammates and my students.

Marble run horse made for me by one of the kids.

We had a variety of ages in the stem club and so one of the challenges and unique opportunities was finding different stem tools and kits for the various age groups to work with. We found ways to bring in more complex equipment for some of the older and keen students to work with. We also found ways to save work that students had done and turn it into projects that they spent multiple weeks working on. It was such a unique and cool thing to see students enjoy the challenge and spend a lot of time and effort on projects. It was also wonderful to see the collaboration and relationships built between the students.

Overall I loved my time with STEM club and I’m sad that my opportunities to volunteer there are coming to an end once I move away from Prince George. I now know that I would potentially be willing to teach in a younger classroom despite being a secondary-year candidate. It was also inspiring to see the ways that younger children engage and approach the challenges that can be posed by STEM activities. There was lots of learning that happened all around; the students learned and I think I learned even more.