STEM to STEAM to STREAM

11/05/2021

The ultimate gift we can give the world is to grow our tiny humans into adult humans who are independent thinkers…Our world needs more adults who question and challenge and hold the powerful accountable.
L.R. Knost

“By now, most of us hear the word STEM and can shout, ‘Science! Technology! Engineering! Math!’, writes Kirsten Haugen in a Wonder section of Exchange magazine that has now been made into an Exchange Reflections called “STEM to STEAM to STREAM.” She goes on to explain, “Not long after STEM was popularized, we realized we’d left out the arts, so we added an A to give our rallying cry more STEAM. Now, more than ever, I’d like to propose turning that STEAM into a bubbling, flowing, living STREAM by adding perhaps the most important letter of all: R for relationships.

What we introduce into a stream will alter its course…Equally so, our relationships…will impact children one way or another, altering the course of their own journeys. When we prioritize relationships in education, it’s easier for our pedagogies, curricula, materials and assessments to become what they were meant to be—tools rather than priorities…

Kirsten then explains about two stories in Wonder, which are “on the surface, quite different. Octavia Butler, from Nebraska, United States, explores how sharing love for and curiosity about the natural world over time allows that love and curiosity to weave itself into the very fiber of a child’s being, demonstrating that holistic, grounded learning goes beyond knowledge or skills, to impact one’s overall orientation to life. Claire Warden, from Scotland, helps us see that it is indeed possible to take a tree for a walk! More importantly, we learn that when we take children’s wildly creative ideas and queries seriously, amazing things can happen and we can form relationships, not just among children and adults, but even with inanimate objects such as trees.”

This Reflections offers much grist for discussion about ways to ground science learning for young children squarely in the realm of relationships. And Octavia Butler and Claire Warden offer inspiring and practical ideas to try with young children.

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