Overview of DIY STEM Modules 

DIY STEM includes a set of foundational sessions that help youth become more confident and comfortable with authentic science practices. Staff guide youth through each module, spending three to four sessions exploring and going deeper into one scientific phenomenon. These modules are most effective for youth ages 9-13, grades 4-8.

DIY STEM is organized into inquiry-based modules that each contain 60-minute sessions. Youth will work with one phenomenon – something that is observable but not immediately explainable – for the duration of each module. They will dig deeper into scientific processes with each subsequent session. In Module 3, youth will spend up to four or five sessions applying what they learned in Module 2 to create a team project. 

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in STEM

DIY STEM was created to ensure that youth from all backgrounds feel confident in their ability to participate and can imagine themselves as scientists and engineers — even if only informally. The callouts below will go a long way to ensuring that your STEM programming is inclusive for all.

Staff Practice

Help youth build their STEM identity. 

• When youth struggle with an activity, persist and then succeed, they feel competent. That feeling of competence builds confidence and a sense of belonging. Create opportunities that require failure before youth can succeed. 
• Create Group Agreements to ensure youth experience the emotional safety needed to make mistakes, experience failure and join in collaborative projects. What's Up With That Cup Session 1: Create Group Agreements for STEM Activities will guide you through the process.
• Representation is crucial for youth to imagine themselves embarking on the many STEM career options available. Recruit volunteers from your community to co-facilitate DIY STEM sessions so that youth can imagine themselves in similar careers. Share stories about people from various backgrounds who have made valuable contributions to science. 

Support youth as they build their curiosity about their community as well as the world around them. 

• Model curiosity by sharing your own questions and interests.
• Encourage youths' interests both informally and through activities that answer their questions or connect to their community.
• Help youth develop and answer their own questions through observation, experimentation, internet searches or printed resources.
• Ask open-ended questions that guide, rather than close a conversation or investigation. 
• Create an interesting physical environment that includes a variety of tools, intriguing items that spark more questions, and sources of information.
• Allow time for open-ended activities where youth can explore, fail and try again.

Curriculum Design 

1. This curriculum is designed to ensure that all participants have a role in helping the group to succeed. This inclusive approach supports youth to experience a sense of belonging. A sense of belonging is crucial to maintaining interest in STEM activities and potentially considering a career in STEM.
2. The focus of these modules is not for participants to learn scientific facts that are either right or wrong. Instead, youth are invited to explore and design their own experiments so that they can model the behavior and attitudes of practicing scientists and engineers. An intentional connection is made between these activities and the work of scientists. 
3. Youth voice and choice is integrated throughout these STEM experiences, ensuring participants each have a unique learning journey and outcome. 

Education Core Program Area

Education programs complement and reinforce what youth learn during the school day while creating experiences that invite them to fall in love with learning. Rooted in social-emotional skills, programs in this area enable all youth to be effective, engaged, adaptive learners who are on track to graduate with a plan for the future. This informal learning space features both remediation and enrichment, all while inviting youth to discover and pursue passions that connect to future opportunities. Education programs include experiential learning, so that youth learn actively, through a “hands-on” and “mind-on” approach. 

At each developmental stage, Education programs prompt youth to plan and prepare for the future. This includes observing and practicing the social-emotional “soft skills” that lead to early successes in building and maintaining friendships, and engaging in programmatic experiences that prepare youth to learn and work in middle school, high school and beyond. Programs and experiences for elementary school-aged youth build the foundation for employability and career exploration, supporting the skill development necessary for success in post-secondary education and the workforce. 

Education Outcome Statement: To enable all youth to be effective, engaged, adaptive learners who are on track to graduate with a plan for the future.

Education Skills: In order to successfully learn and work, youth need to build not only academic skills, but also social-emotional skills. Social-emotional skills help youth build healthy relationships with themselves and others, recognize and manage emotions, and solve problems. All Education programs, including DIY STEM, are designed to build the academic and social-emotional skills that enable youth to become effective, engaged, adaptive learners who are on track to graduate with a plan for the future. 

The Youth Development Professional’s Role in Academic Success

Positive youth development is an intentional approach that engages youth in their communities, schools, organizations, peer groups, and families in a manner that is productive and constructive; recognizes, uses and enhances young people’s strengths; and promotes positive outcomes for young people by providing opportunities, fostering positive relationships and furnishing the support needed to build their leadership strengths. 

Youth development practices that promote teaching and learning are key to the effectiveness of Education programs. Effective Education programs, when facilitated with high-quality youth development practices, help youth develop the attitudes, behaviors, and skills needed to become effective and engaged learners who are on track to graduate with a plan for the future. 

Youth development professionals can help all youth become more effective and engaged learners with the following practices: 

• Modeling curiosity and encouraging youth to ask questions.
• Aiming for co-inquiry as a “guide on the side,” not a “sage on the stage.”
• Planning for success and allowing for mistakes. While youth development professionals provide the support necessary for youth to successfully complete projects and activities, they also include enough challenges so that youth have the opportunity to learn from their mistakes. 
• Helping youth connect what they learn to previous experiences.
• Asking questions to check for understanding and to prompt youth to think about their thinking.
• Teaching learning strategies in addition to content, so that when youth learn new things, they also learn how to learn more effectively.
• Attending to each young person’s diversity and lived experience, by providing multiple options for engagement, representation and expression.

Youth development professionals help all youth stay on track to graduate with a plan for the future using the following practices: 

• Being intentional about giving youth a voice in Education program activities and establishing multiple opportunities for youth to make choices, have input, or share leadership roles in the Club’s programs and activities. 
• Engaging community partners to serve as mentors and volunteers to enhance programming.
• Modeling positive workplace behaviors and incorporating opportunities for youth to practice them in the Club.
• Helping youth connect experiences and interests to future career opportunities.

Practice Positive Youth Development to Create Inclusive Clubs

Inclusion is a core component to building a safe, positive environment in your Clubs. In order to fulfill our mission, Clubs must create safe, positive, and inclusive environments for all youth and teens – including every race, ethnicity, gender, gender expression, sexual orientation, ability, socioeconomic status and religion. By creating inclusive environments in our Clubs, we improve the overall experience for all young people.

When youth development professionals use positive youth development practices, they help ensure all youth:

• Have a voice
• Have a sense of belonging
• Can meaningfully participate in programming

As you implement DIY STEM, consider strategies that help youth feel affirmed, safe, and engaged with Club experiences that meet their needs and abilities. For more information on building and sustaining an inclusive environment, visit BGCA.net and search for "Program Basics BLUEprint." See pages 23-24 of the Program Basics BLUEprint PDF.

Positive Youth Development Supports Character and Social-Emotional Development

All BGCA programs, including DIY STEM, offer opportunities for youth development professionals to model, recognize, reinforce and reflect on character development. Positive youth development provides direction for how you interact with, engage and model behavior for youth. You get to shape the lives of young people every day. As a result, you set the expectations and show youth what the essential character traits (i.e., caring, citizenship, fairness, respect, responsibility and trustworthiness) look like in practice. These character traits come to life when youth practice social-emotional skills like teamwork, conflict management and emotional regulation. Young people use skills to lead themselves and others, as well as demonstrate positive attributes in citizenship, like community engagement and voting.

Youth can start to build character using “caught and taught” approaches. Youth “catch” social-emotional skills when they observe youth development professionals modeling appropriate behaviors, and when they interact with peers. Youth can also be “taught” skills to build good character when skills are explicitly introduced and practiced through program sessions and activities. Use the following formula to understand how character develops over time:

Youth Development Professionals Model Good Character + Youth Practice Skills Regularly = Character Development

For more information, see Practicing Social-Emotional Skills to Achieve Character Development on page 22 of the Program Basics BLUEprint. Visit BGCA.net and search for "Program Basics BLUEprint." It will show you the specific social-emotional skills that young people should practice in order to demonstrate positive behaviors indicative of essential character traits. 

When character development is present:

• Youth development professionals model, and youth practice, skills that display respect, fairness, trustworthiness, responsibility, caring and citizenship.
• Youth understand and successfully get along well with others.
• Youth are better able to control their emotions and solve problems.

When character development is absent:

• Youth do not feel a sense of belonging at the Club.
• Youth lack skills that foster positive peer relationships.
• Youth lack self-control and act out in frustration.

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