Ending the STEM Teacher Shortage
By Talia Milgrom-Elcott, Founder and Executive Director of Beyond100K
To solve our greatest global challenges, from future pandemics to climate change, we will need to tap into the brilliance, passion, and capacity of everyone on this planet. Yet, today, Black, Latino/a/x, and Native Americans represent only 24 percent of the STEM workforce, despite making up nearly 34 percent of the U.S. population. There is no path to the solutions of tomorrow without everyone’s full participation. And to inspire that full participation, we must show young people from every corner of this country that they belong in STEM. In an ecosystem of belonging, teachers are the keystone “species.” As the new school year begins, let’s take this opportunity to recognize, celebrate, and support the critical and outsized role teachers play in creating that ecosystem of belonging.
100Kin10, the predecessor for Beyond100K, launched in response to President Obama’s call to give kids a great STEM education by preparing 100,000 excellent STEM teachers. In ten years, 100Kin10 exceeded that goal by preparing 108,000 STEM teachers for America’s classrooms. In 2022, we committed to going Beyond100K, with a goal to end the STEM teacher shortage by 2043, especially for those most excluded from STEM opportunities. Currently, our network is working to prepare and retain 150,000 new STEM teachers, especially for schools serving majority Black, Latinx, and Native American students, by 2032.
To guide us, we turned to young people. Through our unCommission, a massive, diverse, and participatory opportunity in which 600 young people shared their experiences, we identified action-ready considerations for the future of STEM learning and opportunity.
The stories shared as part of the unCommission provided three key insights that reinforce the importance of having quality STEM teachers to prepare the workforce of the future:
Young people want to make a difference with STEM. The next generation of scientists, innovators, and global citizens wants to use STEM to solve real world challenges in their communities and around the world – they want STEM education that feels exciting and relevant to their lives.
Belonging is crucial to success in STEM. 94 percent of storytellers discussed belonging or non-belonging in the experiences they shared, and stories revealed a positive correlation between feeling a sense of belonging and pursuing STEM coursework in high school and college and, ultimately, as a STEM career.
Teachers are the most powerful force for fostering belonging. Storytellers said their teachers fostered belonging 25 percentage points more than any other individual or experience in their lives. Black, Native American, and LGBTQ storytellers were two times as likely to talk about feeling belonging through identifying with their teachers’ race or gender than others.
A story from a seventeen-year-old female South Asian student expresses the importance of teachers in building a community of belonging. After realizing she was the only girl in a technology education class of 25 boys, Aditi told the unCommission:
“I found an ally in my teacher, who would always boost my confidence with positive affirmations and check-ups. He took my insecurity of being a girl in this boy-dominated place and flipped it on its head. He invited me to present at school events, where educators came to learn more about our STEM pathway programs. He used my work to demonstrate to the class. I still remember when he signed my yearbook and designated me as the “Tech Ed Queen,” destined to make waves in STEM. It would have been easy to ignore the elephant in the room, but I am grateful that he acknowledged me and made the space comfortable for me. [As time went on,] I hit it off enough with my class and developed a dynamic that I found a group to join where I was valued and respected! I felt included, and I became a crucial part of my group’s effort to prototype a device, draft a fake patent, and create packaging for advertising. Overall, that experience shaped my future relationship with STEM, giving me the motivation to take it on.”
Preparing teachers who reflect and represent their students, who cultivate classrooms of belonging and are supported by workplaces of belonging, and who connect STEM learning to the greatest challenges of today creates the conditions for all students to thrive in STEM learning. Beyond100K is proud to partner with the STEMM Opportunity Alliance to end the STEM teacher shortage with equity, representation, and belonging.