Stem Teachers of New York City Inc
For teachers, by teachers, about teaching
Programs and results
What we aim to solve
The U.S. economy suffers from a shortage of qualified workers for manufacturing and technical jobs, and according to census data, African Americans and Hispanics are significantly underrepresented in the STEM workforce. A 2015 study by Deloitte and the Manufacturing Institute projected an unmet need for 2 million skilled workers by 2025. The 2016 U.S. News/Raytheon STEM Index found a decreasing interest in math and science among U.S. students. Additionally, only 15% of NYC’s public schools offer physics, which is central in the STEM curriculum. The shortage of qualified STEM teachers is well-documented and reflected in the US Department of Education’s designation of New York City Public Schools as a Teacher Shortage Area in Grade 7-12 sciences. A 2017 study by the Learning Policy Institute found that STEM teachers are among those most likely to leave the profession and that turnover rates are nearly 70% higher in Title I schools. U.S. students rank 31st in science achievement amon
Our programs
What are the organization's current programs, how do they measure success, and who do the programs serve?
Summer Workshop Intensives
STEMteachersNYC presents monthly 3-hour weekend workshops and more intensive summer workshops in July and August. Workshops were delivered virtually during the pandemic; in-person locations at Brooklyn College, Columbia University Teachers College and the New York Hall of Science are planned beginning in Fall 2021. Led by master teachers, these workshops focus on subjects in physics, chemistry, biology, engineering, math, computational thinking, data science, culturally-relevant STEM, middle school science and elementary school science. In workshops, teachers do experiments in "student mode", then discuss pedagogical issues in "teacher mode". This combination of deep content and pedagogy distinguishes STEMteachersNYC. Innovation is part of the organization's DNA. Typical participant comments: "You are the best PD out there". "We know the standards, we just want to know how to teach them, and this workshop is it!"
Where we work
External reviews
Videos
Our results
How does this organization measure their results? It's a hard question but an important one.
Evaluation documents
Download evaluation reportsNumber of teachers recruited
This metric is no longer tracked.Totals By Year
Related Program
Summer Workshop Intensives
Type of Metric
Output - describing our activities and reach
Direction of Success
Increasing
Context Notes
2020 was the COVID pandemic year. Some workshop were cancelled and teachers were burnt out.
Number of small learning community opportunities offered to improve undergraduate student engagement
This metric is no longer tracked.Totals By Year
Type of Metric
Other - describing something else
Direction of Success
Increasing
Context Notes
These were pre-service teacher attendees at one or more of our 31 workshops during the 2021-22 school year
Goals & Strategy
Learn about the organization's key goals, strategies, capabilities, and progress.
Charting impact
Four powerful questions that require reflection about what really matters - results.
What is the organization aiming to accomplish?
Our mission is to cultivate excellence in STEM teaching and to promote deep understanding and success for students through innovative, teacher-led professional development. In our professional development workshops, participants have the opportunity to practice and engage with innovative classroom-ready techniques, technologies, curricula and pedagogical strategies in “student mode” and discuss them with peers in “teacher mode”. The range of workshops covers all the sciences, as well as engineering, technology and math, and presents opportunities for teachers at all grade levels. We aim to strengthen teachers' content knowledge and pedagogy to make lasting change in their classrooms and improve outcomes for their students.
STEMteachersNYC aims to foster a robust, national Professional Learning Community of STEM teachers that supports teachers throughout their careers, from pre-service teacher training, through the challenging early years in the classroom, reinvigorating veteran teachers and offering peer leadership opportunities.
What are the organization's key strategies for making this happen?
STEMteachersNYC delivers its mission through four programs: 1) Three-hour weekend workshops are led by teacher-members of our community of practice who volunteer their time to share ideas and techniques that work in their classrooms. 2) The Summer STEM Institute offers intensive workshops during July and August, led by paid master teachers. 3)Contracted workshops, including workshops for the NYC Department of Education, bring PD directly to schools and districts, and 4) the STEMteachersNYC community of practice extends the workshop experience and allows participants to connect on-line throughout the year, through working groups in elementary STEM, culturally relevant STEM teaching, computational thinking, and through an annual STEM Expo and Unconference.
Major strategies for 2022 and beyond include:
1. Strengthening our Leadership Pathway to develop a Professional Learning Community of workshop and in-school teacher-leaders who deeply examine what excellent STEM teaching looks like and explore innovative ways to help teachers achieve it in their own classrooms.
2. Creating physical hubs in all five New York City boroughs to meet teachers where they are and connect with pre-service teacher training programs. These hubs will be sites for workshops, meetings spaces for teacher communities and places to connect degree programs, teacher peers and classroom practice in a Community Learning Network.
3. Incorporate the successful practices developed during the COVID pandemic to shape a permanent on-line workshop presence and continue to grow our national audience of STEM teachers.
4. Continue to forge partnerships and actively participate in STEM education networks such as 100kin10 to increase our impact.
What are the organization's capabilities for doing this?
STEMteachersNYC’s active learning approach has deep roots in educational innovation dating back to the 1950s and 60s. Robert Karplus, a Berkeley physicist at the forefront of research (and not incidentally, STEMteachersNYC President Dr. Fernand Brunschwig’s thesis advisor) invented the three-stage “learning cycle” to describe how children learn science as the basis for a highly successful elementary school curriculum. In the 1980s, David Hestenes and Malcolm Wells at the University of Arizona further developed Karplus’ ideas about learning into Modeling Instruction. and with a decade of NSF funding, trained physics and chemistry teachers around the country to use the approach. After NSF funding dried up in the 1990’s, teachers who used this approach organized themselves into a community of practice, creating the American Modeling Teachers Association (AMTA). Several of STEMteachersNYC’s founders are modelers. Under their leadership, STEMteachersNYC introduced Modeling Instruction to the New York City metropolitan area, and continues to diversify its offerings and approaches to move beyond the existing Modeling Instruction workshops in response to the needs of the biology teachers, elementary school teachers and middle school teachers in its constituency, among others. STEMteachersNYC workshop leaders and founders include some of the country’s most distinguished teachers, including Seth Guiñals-Kupperman, winner of Math for America’s 2018 Muller Award in Science, Mark Schober winner the AAPT’s 2017 Paul W. Zitzewitz Excellence in K-12 Teaching Award and Zhanna Glazenburg, a New York State Master Teacher. STEMteachersNYC currently has 1520 teacher-members, and has presented over 300 teacher-led workshops attended by over 6,000 teachers. It continues to innovate, broaden its scope and work with new partners.
What have they accomplished so far and what's next?
Teacher-membership has grown 30% per year since founding and at the end of 2021, numbered 1520. The diversity of topics offered in workshops continues to broaden and includes computational thinking, elementary science, standards-based grading, biotechnology, environmental science, and engineering, in addition to traditional strengths in physics and chemistry. The number of weekend workshops has doubled in the past several years, engaging a wider range of teachers as volunteer leaders. A community of elementary school teachers actively devise new workshops. A group of teachers developed workshops on Culturally Responsive STEM teaching in 2018 and has been presenting them ever since. A one-on-one teacher coaching program for elementary school science has begun. The process our leaders engaged in to remake their workshops and retain their excellence in the on-line space has developed into a more formal Leadership Pathway.
In 2014, 6-figure funding from the Simons Foundation enabled a significant expansion of the summer workshop offerings at Teachers College, Columbia University. A second Simons Foundation grant in 2015 supported the creation of similar grass-roots teacher organizations in several cities across the country. In 2016, STEMteachersNYC won a competitive grant from 100kin10 to infuse computational thinking into 9th grade physics. In 2017, STEMteachersNYC won a second competitive 100kin10 grant for its Kid Talk, Teacher Talk in Elementary Science project, to build on teachers' skills in teaching reading and writing to encourage student conversations around science observations and integrate science into the school day. (S/he who talks the most, learns the most) which has resulted in more than 20 post-project workshops for elementary school teachers.
STEMteachersNYC is an active member of 100kin10, helping to shape the research agenda and knowledge base about how to improve science teaching. We have become a sought-after partner of the NYC Department of Education (DOE) for professional development that they contract themselves and for which they recommend us as partners. We have many other partnerships, including with New Visions for Public Schools, Harlem's District 5, Columbia University Department of Physics, NYC Department of Parks and Recreation, Cornell Tech, Brooklyn College and the New York Hall of Science.
Future directions include a focus on computational thinking, a focus on teacher-leader development (the Leader Pathway) a focus on bringing our workshops closer to teachers in their own communities and strengthening our Professional Learning Community and the expansion of our programs to a national audience.
How we listen
Seeking feedback from people served makes programs more responsive and effective. Here’s how this organization is listening.
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How is your organization using feedback from the people you serve?
To inform the development of new programs/projects, To strengthen relationships with the people we serve, To understand people's needs and how we can help them achieve their goals, To evaluate and modify programs
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Which of the following feedback practices does your organization routinely carry out?
We collect feedback from the people we serve at least annually, We aim to collect feedback from as many people we serve as possible, We take steps to ensure people feel comfortable being honest with us, We engage the people who provide feedback in looking for ways we can improve in response, We act on the feedback we receive
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What challenges does the organization face when collecting feedback?
We don't have any major challenges to collecting feedback
Financials
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Operations
The people, governance practices, and partners that make the organization tick.
Connect with nonprofit leaders
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- Analyze a variety of pre-calculated financial metrics
- Access beautifully interactive analysis and comparison tools
- Compare nonprofit financials to similar organizations
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Connect with nonprofit leaders
SubscribeBuild relationships with key people who manage and lead nonprofit organizations with GuideStar Pro. Try a low commitment monthly plan today.
- Analyze a variety of pre-calculated financial metrics
- Access beautifully interactive analysis and comparison tools
- Compare nonprofit financials to similar organizations
Want to see how you can enhance your nonprofit research and unlock more insights? Learn More about GuideStar Pro.
Stem Teachers of New York City Inc
Board of directorsas of 06/07/2023
Ms. Kerry Kline
Packer Collegiate School
Term: 2022 - 2022
Kyle Clayton
City Harvest
Kerry Kline
Packer Collegiate
Craig Buszka
Montgomery Township High School
Juliette Guarino Berg
The Town School
Patricia Bauer
Retired teacher
Ray Eason, Jr.
JPMorgan
Elissa Levy
Hunter College Elementary School
Kate Macaulay
Hunter College Elementary School
Darren Sumter
Donghong Sun
Tandon School of Engineering, NYU
Ann Thibodeau
Bridgewater Advisors
Martina Meijer
PS 139
Allen Powe
Regis High School
Howard Spergel
Midwood High School
Board leadership practices
GuideStar worked with BoardSource, the national leader in nonprofit board leadership and governance, to create this section.
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Board orientation and education
Does the board conduct a formal orientation for new board members and require all board members to sign a written agreement regarding their roles, responsibilities, and expectations? No -
CEO oversight
Has the board conducted a formal, written assessment of the chief executive within the past year ? No -
Ethics and transparency
Have the board and senior staff reviewed the conflict-of-interest policy and completed and signed disclosure statements in the past year? Yes -
Board composition
Does the board ensure an inclusive board member recruitment process that results in diversity of thought and leadership? Yes -
Board performance
Has the board conducted a formal, written self-assessment of its performance within the past three years? No
Organizational demographics
Who works and leads organizations that serve our diverse communities? Candid partnered with CHANGE Philanthropy on this demographic section.
Leadership
The organization's leader identifies as:
Race & ethnicity
Gender identity
Transgender Identity
Sexual orientation
No data
Disability
No data
Equity strategies
Last updated: 11/19/2021GuideStar partnered with Equity in the Center - an organization that works to shift mindsets, practices, and systems to increase racial equity - to create this section. Learn more
- We seek individuals from various race backgrounds for board and executive director/CEO positions within our organization.
- We have community representation at the board level, either on the board itself or through a community advisory board.