What Memorable Experiences Have You Had in Learning Science or Math?

By KATHERINE SCHULTEN

For three young finalists in the Intel Science Talent Search, there were some big questions that needed answering before the end of high school.

 

What moments or concepts do you remember best from your education in science, technology, engineering or math, the so-called STEM subjects?
What high or low points come to mind when thinking about classes you’ve taken in school? What do you remember learning informally, outside of school, whether on your own or with friends or relatives?
A special back-to-school edition of the Science Times section is asking what works, and what doesn’t, in STEM education, and we are inviting students to help answer that question by reflecting on their own learning in these areas.
So, if you’re 13 to 19 years old, please tell us below about a memorable moment in your STEM education — whether in school or out of school, whether last week or 10 years ago — and what it taught you.
Note: This is a special edition of our daily Student Opinion question. Posting a comment here by 7 a.m. Eastern on Sept. 27 will enter you in a contest that we will judge in collaboration with The Times’s science desk, and make you eligible to have your writing featured elsewhere on NYTimes.com.

To help answer the question, you might ask yourself:

• What comes to mind when you think back over the best, or worst, moments in the science, technology, engineering or math classes you have taken since you were a child? What lessons, activities or assignments were especially memorable? Why?
• How have your experiences outside of school taught you about scientific, mathematical or technological concepts? For example, you might remember an exhibition at a science museum, or something you made or experimented with in an after-school club .
• Based on your experience, what advice would you give teachers of STEM subjects? Why?

So whether it was the time your third-grade teacher took you outside to see real-world parallel and perpendicular lines; the camping trip you went on with your Girl Scout troop where you learned, firsthand, about how poison ivy spreads; or the summer you spent at an explosives or coding camp, tell us in detail about one important experience and what it taught you — and what advice you might give teachers because of it.

We have a few basic rules for this contest:

• Please keep your responses to 350 words or fewer. (Here is a word count tool.)
• Anyone who is 13 to 19 years old, from anywhere in the world, is eligible.
• As always for this blog, please omit your last name, but please include your age and hometown.
• Only one comment per student, please.

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Teachers: We’ll leave this question open to comments indefinitely, and we invite you to bring all of your classes to answer it, but please remember that if you would like your students to be considered for publication, they must post their responses by Sept. 27.
Students 13 and older are invited to comment below. Please use only your first name. For privacy policy reasons, we will not publish student comments that include a last name.

 

 

The New York Times