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This week is
National Volunteer Week and a new CSIRO blog article
describes the
work that CSIRO postdoc Chenoa Tremblay is doing as part of the STEM
Professionals in Schools program. The program individually matches
teachers and STEM professionals, and they work together to increase
teachers’ and students’ STEM skills, knowledge, and confidence through
a range of activities. Chenoa has partnerships with a primary school
and a high school, and has explored all manner of STEM subjects with
the students. “Volunteering also gives me an opportunity to explore
topics I might not have thought to explore on my own," Chenoa notes.
"For example, I hadn’t considered studying how a butterfly flies until
the students asked to talk about zoology. Science is about
challenging our understanding of the world, galaxy and universe around
us. It is a way of thinking that takes very large questions or
problems and breaks them up into smaller pieces that we can solve
before relating that back to the larger questions. With this
approach there’s no reason why even young students can’t be involved
in solving very big questions, and part of my purpose in volunteering
is showing them that,” she said.
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