Time: 9:40 AM – 10:25 AM
Abstract:
When you start down the ecosystem path, you quickly realize there is no finish line. However you define STEM, whatever you intend do to promote equity or safeguard the planet or promote social mobility, none of it matters if your ecosystem implodes or withers away. How do you keep on making a difference in the lives of teachers, students and communities? Learn sustainability lessons in an interactive and hopefully fun way from a 4th generation STEM ecosystem while exploring your own ecosystem through lenses of love that seem to matter.
Outline:
The learning goal is simple, and that is to take a hard look at ways in which each participant, regardless of their, role adds to or detracts from the capacity for sustainability of their ecosystem.
A rough outline since June is still far, far away:
- Identifying key biotic (human factors) and abiotic (tangible goods) that are needed to sustain a STEM Ecosystem.
- A deeper dive into the human factors through the lens of a STEM ecosystem as a complex web of human relationships. And, “love” has everything to do with that.
- A few practical “best practices” for sustaining ecosystem relationships and therefore the ecosystem as a whole.
- Self-reflection and forward facing commitments.
I am thinking of this session as a guided inquiry. I will pose questions around a framework for thinking about STEM ecosystems as complex webs of human relationships, but the context for participants will be largely derived from their own experiences rather than mine.
I am not sure about what is meant by addressing failure. My own failure as a facilitator of learning? Failure of X, Y or Z in an ecosystem? Generally speaking, failure is repeating the same mistake over and over again. I will try to make new mistakes in this session.