Work in teams, persist and learn from failures, evaluate and iterate - these are all practices many of us already apply in our everyday life and these are the same practices engineers utilize in their work. AzCASE believes all staff and youth have an engineering mindset! Join the Million Girls Moonshot Peer Learning Community to cultivate an engineering mindset within ourselves and with our youth. Deadline to enroll is March 10th.

The Million Girls Moonshot Peer Learning Community will provide a unique space to:

This is a cohort-based experience where participants share in a learning and support journey from start to finish. 

The sessions will be shaped by the needs of the cohort and will center peer cross-sharing and thought partnership. STEM Next online modules will be integrated to support exploration of effective STEM activity facilitation with children and youth. 

Each member will receive a certificate of completion and the cohort will be recognized in the AzCASE newsletter. 

▶ Submit an enrollment form by Thursday, March 10th. Space is limited and enrollment will be confirmed on a rolling basis until the cohort is filled. 

Teams of 2-3 from each program are encouraged to enroll. Each person must submit an enrollment form to participate. 

Contact Selena at slevy@azafterschool.org with any questions.

Families are a child’s first educator and this role does not halt on day one of school. Families lay the foundation for future educational success. They make a difference to a child’s attitude, motivation to learn, and academic achievement through showing their positive attitude towards mathematics and being engaged in mathematics and numeracy at home. However, these positive attitudes and actions are not so easy to achieve for all families, and this is where school and afterschool educators can help. Fostering school-home partnerships is pivotal in enhancing an inclusive education beyond the classroom, and in turn supports mathematics learning in the classroom. But, how are schools encouraging families to engage in mathematics, and capitalizing on support from home?

by Ron Ottinger, ED of STEM Next Opportunity Fund for Forbes

As we know all too well, many young people from Black, Latino and low-income communities — especially young women — have been unfairly underrepresented in STEM learning and STEM careers. There’s also overwhelming consensus about the importance of STEM learning for all young people, both in regards to career-ready skills and for the essential life skills they gain, including critical thinking, resilience and communication. Yet despite this consensus, barriers to STEM exploration and career preparedness persist for the children who need it most. Certainly, there has been progress but not nearly enough. What are we doing wrong? 

One of the biggest problems I’ve encountered in my decades of leadership in STEM education and philanthropy is that investors and policymakers who want to create long-lasting equity in STEM continue to miss a giant piece of the solution: Out-of-school time (OST), which includes afterschool, summer, youth development and informal STEM learning spaces.