Improving access to quality STEM Education in low-resource schools

While growing up, I was fascinated with Science. I had a childhood dream of making a big discovery in Science. In high school, I daydreamed about discovering a new enzyme. I had already gotten the name for. Of course, I planned to name it after me, BLESSASE, since most enzymes’ names end with -ase.

But that dream took a huge fall. I attended a government-funded high school and one of the challenges we encountered was having access to quality laboratory work i.e. practicals as commonly called among Nigerian science students.

This was mainly due to the unavailability of good laboratory reagents. Most of the reagents in our science lab were outdated, expired and could not be used for any meaningful laboratory work.?

Many years later, as a new science teacher in one of the low-income schools in Imo State, Nigeria, I was carrying out food test experiments with my students (That was where I started my teaching career) but we weren't getting good results. The mistake I made then was I didn't run a prototype or demo of the food tests before the class (I made a mental note never to commit that mistake again). You can imagine the embarrassment I felt when the results were not concordant with the expected ones. It was a terrible situation.

Another bitter experience was during a Biology dissection work with my Biology students. The chloroform in the laboratory could not put the laboratory rats to sleep because it was expired. We did the most inhumane thing, we dissected the rats while they were active. Thank God those were lab rats.

These incidents prevented me from carrying out any other laboratory work with my students because standard laboratory reagents were never provided for the science laboratory.

Laboratory work is a crucial aspect of STEM Education is laboratory work. Science students find Science less abstract and more interesting when they are fully and frequently engaged in laboratory work. During my teaching experience in a better school, Science students got excited about science practicals and one could see that they were ready to learn and would not forget what they had learned in the laboratory.

If you remove laboratory work from Science, you have nothing left. Low-resource schools face a great challenge in STEM Education. They lack access to good laboratory equipment and reagents plus inadequate or no supply of STEM teachers who can guide and teach students.

How then can low-resource schools improve access to laboratory work for their students?

Collaboration offers a great solution for enhancing access to quality STEM Education.

Low-resource schools located in similar geographical locations can pull resources together to establish and equip unified Physics, Biology and Chemistry laboratories. They can also hire a Laboratory technologist who will work with the available STEM teachers to carry out Science practicals for students.

These will go a long way to improve access to quality STEM Education in low-resource schools.

Till the next Iconic letter,

Stay blessed and fruitful.

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Blessing Izuchukwu

#theiconicteacher