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Hi Friends!
Aside: I LOVE podcasts!  Along with books, podcasts is how I survive life as a middle school teacher.  This 10 minute podcast was interesting, but really FAST.  I immediately found another interview with Tim Needles on the Teaching Artist Podcast, which I will listen to later...

Now to the most difficult (probably) element for me: Curiosity. But really, it's time. As I said before, my main objective is to cover the sciencematerial I need to cover, and one of my summer tasks is planning out my year, so that I know what is happening in my class on a particular day. Curiosity sounds to me like it would take an unpredictable amount of time. I would FAR rather propose a question to the students and have them wonder about that, than ask them what they are curious about and give them free reign. The thought of it kind of gives me anxiety as I type this answer....

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Designs may look great on paper, but they almost inevitably fail.  This is a message I give to my students before they even meet with their group for the first time.  As mentioned, time is a major factor for me.  The students have a deadline, whether it is 10 minutes, a class period, or four class periods.  They need to leave time to test their design so that when it inevitably fails, they can re-design and try again.  Knowing this before they start is pretty helpful to the students who, before I learned to warn them about failure, had a difficult time recovering.

There is one STEM task I do at the beginning of the year where the students fail and fail and fail, and then succeed!  I have confidently told them they WILL succeed.  And then last year, there was a group that just COULD NOT DO IT.  The first group EVER to completely fail.  It was frustrating to everyone in the room, and they were embarrassed. After debating whether to really get involved with this group while the rest of their peers watched, or give it up completely, I decided the students really weren't that invested (they weren't), cut my losses and gave the class a few minutes of recess. The incident was forgotten, and they all appreciated the outside time.

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I really enjoyed this podcast! He brought up some great points!

I think that failure is the most challenging element to bring into my classroom. I often remind the students that failure is an important part of learning and that many people fail a million times before succeeding. I think it is such an important lesson to teach this to our students. It is hard to do sometimes because you do not want them to be discouraged and give up. Rather, we want them to learn from their mistake and keep trying until they succeed!

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I think that the element of fun is easiest to integrate into my classroom. Kids love to have fun. If the students are having fun, they are more likely to learn and feel comfortable trying new ideas! Also, they will be more likely to keep trying fun STEAM/STEM ideas if they are having fun. I think it's important to show them that learning can be fun!

I know that sometimes this can be hard to integrate into the classroom, but if you model that you are having fun too, the students will pick up on that and have fun while learning too! As Tim Needles said, "Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Math can all be fun!"

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Hi all,
Even though I am trained as a Special Ed teacher, it is a challenge for me to get all students excited about the project and work cooperatively and patiently with each other.  Then if the project does not meet with success, to deal with defeatist attitudes and the reactions of the rest of the class to the upset student.
This past year I have had several students who I need to spend a great deal of time and effort to walk them through processes and monitor behavior.  This has been difficult for other students who love challenges and are super excited to work on new projects.
After the Covid disruption I noticed that more time is spent on getting students to stay tuned, to work cooperatively, and to deal with challenging activities.  And, some students get so over stimulated by hands-on activities. I find myself getting cranky that so much time is spent balancing students' appropriate excitement and inappropriate youthful exuberance.
Some days I need to brace myself for what kind of behaviors will be elicited by 'special projects.'

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Design would be the hardest part to bring into my classroom. I admit I have a hard time facilitating instead of doing it myself. When I have worked with robotics with my students, it takes everything I have not to reach in and do it myself. And most of the time, the students come up with a better idea than I had. Another reason design is hard for me is because of time. When stressed for time, I want to help the process go faster!

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Design would be the hardest for me to implement.  I struggle with seeing the big picture at times. Just getting started can be difficult for me...I need to see an example!
I agree with Shannon's points that sometimes students come up with better ideas and when students are not keeping up, it is hard for me not to jump in based on time restraints.

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This podcast was very insightful and gave a great outlook on so many aspects of STEAM?STEM learning.

The element that I think is most challenging to bring into my classroom is failure.  As an adult i know that one can learn and grow from mistakes if you evaluate the failure with a positive outlook. However, this is often hard to instill in students when emotions are high and they are frustrated with the outcome of the project or task. In my previous experience with third grade students, we spend a lot of time on developing social and emotional skills when working with others in order to have effective collaboration. When the students/group fails or they face a challenge along the way, this can sometimes derail the entire progress that the group has made. Allowing my students the opportunity to fail is something that I absolutely want to do as it prepares them for the real-world, however I know that this may pose some challenges with classroom management.

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Like the rest of the folks in this column, failure is the element that I see as the most challenging in my classroom. I think that failing upward or learning from failure is absolutely something that I do and I want my students to do but I have trouble modelling this for students. When I facilitate my lessons I am a perfectionist so they don't see the multiple ideas or iterations of things that went into making the lesson. I also don't always leave a lot of time for failure. When students don't learn something the first time I usually just scoop them up with a reteach the next lesson and we move on. I would like to do a better job of showing my own growth from failure and giving opportunities to my students to do the same.

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I love when students are creative. Some of my students were more creative than others. My fear is that I would let some students take so much time/ ownership in what they were doing that if they were totally off task or too detailed in something they don't need to be, that I would not stop them. I wouldn't want to squash their creativity.

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I loved how simply they explained design is. I never really thought of picking out my outfits as a design:). I also like how they said, 'Oh .. wow.." It seems that as students complete these STEM activities a lot of praising needs to go into each step of the learning experience..which is something I love to do !!

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I find a modern challenge in the classroom is that (some) students jump to google an answer to avoid failure, or to circumvent the productive struggle stage. Sometimes they will rely on the first answer they find on the internet without understanding the context of what the "answer" was as well which is a double let down because not only did they risk authentic failure, which they could learn from, but they also did not put any effort into understanding the raw information on the internet. A lot of students are used to cookbook labs in science, meaning, follow the recipe and the predicted outcome will yeild itself, ta-da, done. Teachers are often short on time so labs that start with failure and build context and knowledge take time, materials, confusion and skills that students often don't have in abundance, mainly a growth mindset. Many students will "fail" at something and just want to abandon it and move on to something they can "win" at, it can be really hard to cope with students' anxiety issues as well when they see failure as FAILURE and not a path to discovery. It takes time and a lot of supports for students who aren't naturally engaged.

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I agree fun is the easiest to implement. Just take out a deck of cards or dominoes in math class and the kids forget they are practicing fact fluency or comparing numbers, they are just "playing games" with their friends all the while keeping score and doing mental math.

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I think failure would be the most challenging to implement. Especially, in our world today, when society focuses on perfection and immediate results. Retraining the students (and parents) to think of failure as learning process will be challenging. The number of my students that have palpable anxiety in the classroom will also influence their willingness to take risks and be wrong and learn from it. Creating an environment where they feel safe enough to fail would be vital.