Effecting Change

Currently I teach fourth grade and I only fit in science three times a week, for thirty minutes each day.  This is my first year back to elementary school because I have been teaching middle school physical science for the last five years.  The challenge that I face is that the elementary school that I teach at is mostly focused on math, reading, and writing.  I find that this is consistent throughout the district that  I teach in.  In the past, I would get students in middle school and it would be apparent that they were years behind in science content and had not been exposed to much, if any scientific inquiry.  Now that I am at the elementary school, I feel the enormous pressure that is being placed on me to focus on math, reading, and writing.  Next year I am committed to do science 5 days a week.  It is important to me, as an educator, to prepare my students to become scientifically literate adults.  I need to play my part at the elementary level to get students excited about science, to explore their curiosity, and to expose them to hands on inquiry based experiments.  Everything I have learned about STEM careers reinforces the importance of this mission.