Scientific American – Amanda Baker
“Just like anyone who works in science communication, I spend a fair amount of my time reading and thinking about the best ways to encourage an interest in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) in younger audiences. Every year there are new programs, new games, and new classroom tools which try to take the natural enthusiasm for science that blossoms in elementary schools and carry it through middle and high school and into future STEM careers. With each new program you can find people, both in and out of current STEM careers, who express how much they would have loved that program when they had been kids. But that got me wondering – if these programs did not exist when the current population of new scientists and engineers were in school, what factors eventually led them to STEM degrees and careers when they were young. So I asked them. I reached out to eight of my colleagues who are currently in STEM fields and asked them a series of questions about their childhood interests in science, school experiences, and roadblocks that they faced on their path from elementary school to their current positions…Their feedback covered not only what drew them to science, but also what had almost pushed them away. Below I have consolidated the feedback into five main points, including the advice they would give their middle school selves if they could do it all again.”(more)