Even though I’m already very enthusiastic about STEM, my STEM Insight placement with Crossrail was an amazing experience for me; it really broadened my horizons.
I met so many different employees - project managers, programme managers, data handlers, for example, who had first degrees in engineering and other STEM subjects. They were living proof that STEM skills, such as critical thinking, planning and problem solving, are valued and highly transferable in the workplace.
Crossrail is a great company with strong values; more than a quarter of its employees are women and it’s great to see that in engineering. Its new ventilation system was designed by female engineers and the company has taken on large numbers of apprentices in its work. I had a really good impression of the organisation and its approach to the workforce. It is very big on Health and Safety as you’d expect, but it also takes the general health and well-being of its employees very seriously; it was a great working environment.
Because the placement experience was so immersive, it made STEM so much bigger and wider than anything you could possibly understand by looking at websites or by reading a book. It really opened my eyes to the power of STEM and that’s what we try to do, back at college, by immersing our students in STEM activities and experiences.
In our college STEM Centre, young people come in who are often a bit disengaged. They think their time at the STEM Centre is another hurdle to clear, but once they get started, we can’t get rid of them!
I think kids have that enthusiasm for STEM at primary level; they are excited and creative but somehow, that enthusiasm gets snuffed out. We work with primary children who draw humans with blue faces, or paint cars upside down and I think teachers sometimes criticise them and replace that creativity with a “Stop! That’s not accurate!”. I’ve seen teachers do it – sometimes when we ask the kids to design something, they might have a teacher who makes too many suggestions and gives too many directions. They are trying to be helpful of course, but you end up with children producing uniform designs which are just variations of an ideal which a teacher had in their own heads.
All teachers have good intentions but they can sometimes stymie the development of young people so by the time they get to FE, the kids have lost that creativity. Here at the STEM Centre we help them to rediscover how to discover, experiment and try stuff out in STEM.
"Because the placement experience was so immersive, it made STEM so much bigger and wider than anything you could possibly understand by looking at websites or by reading a book."
Working with quite young children, they often don’t know what it is they want to do, but they’ve often decided already what they cannot do and what careers are inaccessible to them. We try to change that by inspiring and motivating them in STEM. So, yes, they might not have a molecular biologist in the family – but that doesn’t mean they can’t be one!
We work with all sorts of students – home education groups, learners with disabilities, not in education, employment or training (NEETS) and other marginalised groups. It’s amazing to bring them in and watch them become engaged. They make predictions and guesses, find out whether they were right or wrong and explore what they have learnt.
It’s very rewarding for us to see that 100% attention and to watch that flame ignite in them and see them become engaged. Every now and then someone will shine out and we will encourage them – “Have you thought of a career in this? You’re good at this, you could try a course and succeed in this.”. It’s actually life-changing – and that’s the power of STEM.
About the author
Marcia Mendoza is a STEM Learning Coordinator at Barking and Dagenham College and recently won an ENTHUSE Celebration Award for Excellence in Teaching in FE. Marcia recently participated in an industrial placement with Crossrail, funded by the STEM Insight Programme.
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