Maine Governor's Academy for STEM Education Leadership: March 2014

The PRIME Leadership Framework Book Blog

Welcome to our Governor's Academy blog! During the Fall of 2013, we used this site to discuss the book, The PRIME Leadership Framework.

Governor's Academy Fellows have recently expressed interest in developing our own definition of what's frequently a "buzz word": STEM. So, let's talk! In order to bring the other Governor's Academy Fellows and Mentors into our conversation, I encourage some of you who attended our work session at the Abromson Center to get the discussion started. Why the interest in creating our own operational definition of STEM for Maine?

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We have a diverse and well-rounded group, which should lead to some interesting conversations. One thing to remember - the most recent post is always at the top of the blog. If you haven't been on for a while, scroll down and work backwards.

Feel free to play around with it a bit to get to know how it works. Try a test post - you can always delete it afterwards. Don't hesitate to wade right in!

Looking for something else? Try the Governor's Academy Website!

Tuesday, March 4, 2014

Our definition of STEM

Schools, policymakers, businesses are all taking STEM - what a 'buzz phrase'! Who has a clear definition? Do we all mean the same thing?
Some of the Maine Governor's Academy Fellows were recently meeting, and wanted to see if we could develop our own operational definition: What do we mean by STEM?

So, who wants to start the conversation? Please share your thoughts, definitions from some of your resources (eg. STEM Lesson Essentials, The Case for STEM Education) - and let's see what we come up with!

Monday, March 3, 2014

New Challenges

I'm coming up on a set of challenges we haven't covered in the work we've done so far. It wasn't addressed in our PD simulation, either. I'd be very interested in learning more than I've figured out on my own about school department budgeting and, especially about securing long-term funding for high quality PD, such as we are modeling at the Academy. I think that securing grant money will be especially important to those of us who are working toward implementation (some day) of NGSS. I don't think that local communities with the annual budget decision being made by referendum are going to be able to consistently fund these efforts over the time we need. Is anyone else interested in this topic? May we discuss? OR, can it be part of our Academy in April or June?