A STEAM-Powered Partnership to Improve Teaching at Scale

A conversation with thought leader & professional development coach Claudia Amaya

We were thrilled to welcome Claudia Amaya, an education thought leader and TeachUNITED (TU) training alumna, to the TU Podcast a couple of months ago. 

Last year, TeachUNITED expanded our footprint throughout Latin America through a partnership with PhET (Physics Education Technology) Simulation, training their educators from Argentina, Colombia, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Mexico, and Venezuela — reaching 325 new students through the hard work of participants like Claudia.

As a TeachUNITED Mentor for Change graduate, a PhET Professional Development Coach, and a STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Mathematics) expert, Claudia is now co-leading a teacher training program in partnership with the TU team. Together, we’re supporting 160+ teachers from 17 countries, positively impacting an estimated 24,000 students!

We recently invited her to sit down with Yohns Solis, TeachUNITED Director of Implementation in Latin America, to share how STEAM skills are enriching student learning while transforming professional development for educators. Check out the full episode here!

TeachUNITED Director Yohns Solis: Last year, you became a [TeachUNITED] Mentor for Change. We would like to know how it has benefited your professional growth? 

Claudia Amaya: I think the first thing, the important thing, is that we can define together what we understand by professional development. FrPersonally, it helped me find some names for some strategies that I maybe already used, but didn’t know there was a methodology, an order, a linearity. When I discover something new and something that really impacts the educational community, I try to share it by applying it in the classroom — whether in person or transmitting it to different educators that I have the opportunity to be with in communities, on my social networks, and all that. TeachUNITED has given us that, a different way of doing education from where we are and from the context in which we are.

I’m going to speak at the Latin American level, where I have a bit more experience in terms of seeing how this is implemented. It’s not enough just to develop technical skills, but also soft skills as they are known now. This is developed through collaborative work, critical thinking. 

So here comes in [TeachUNITED’s] Mentors for Change program, because for us as educators to transmit these soft skills, we must also possess them. We are used to being given all the tools to teach a subject, a class, but we forget a bit who we really are, which is guides. We are tutors. Throughout history, there have been different roles for educators. Now, I believe, more than ever an accompaniment is needed, since technology is providing a lot of knowledge. Our skill that we must develop is that. 

[TeachUNITED’s] Mentors for Change makes STEAM education have a human foundation and no longer just that technical part that is much criticized about STEM education. It goes accompanied by developing these skills that go beyond the concrete — a little more thinking about the human being, thinking about the educator, also thinking about the students and the entire educational community.

Yohns: You have decided not to keep [TeachUNITED’s] Mentors for Change as something personal but to share it with a larger community. You truly want to be a ‘mentor for change.’ Tell us why you decided to replicate the program in the Latin American community.

Claudia: Well, I think that to the extent that I can, I replicate what has personally touched me, changed me. This community where we are replicating, this is a community that has been forming through various opportunities I’ve had. 

Definitely, PhET Simulation has been the center for gathering this community. However, I am also a Google Innovator Educator, so I also have that part, another community where I invite the Google Champions or the community of GDG, which I also belong to, here in El Salvador. So we have strengthened an incredible community. I feel very honored to be the one who has united this community, because we have teachers from Argentina who feel very distant to those in Mexico, Bolivia, Peru…

For me, it’s like adding a plus to everything we have already learned, because we have instructional strategies, we know how to use many applications for mathematics, for sciences, for biology, for chemistry, but we are falling short on the human side. That’s the best part of how the program Mentors for Change can be described, it’s about humanizing everything we are doing in these exact sciences. 

So I proposed it to the community, I threw out the hook, so to speak, and everyone was on board. It’s a community with which I feel very comfortable sharing things, and that’s why we decided to share it. I contacted you and started making the moves to make it a reality.

Claudia’s professional learning community supported by the TeachUNITED team

Yohns: I’d like to know what were your first impressions in this first session? What are some techniques that can be enhanced when we talk about STEM skills?

Claudia: First of all, I felt that it was something that needed the support of both TeachUNITED and PhET Simulations because they have been the link that allows us to work together. And at first, I felt it was something very complicated. How am I going to gather so many people in one place and make them see that it really is a program? I am always grateful for the confidence that both TeachUNITED and being a Mentor for Change have given me to replicate what I believe is one of the objectives of being a Mentor for Change: to replicate this. 

At its core, that is what is sought within the community, because the first impressions they gave were very positive.They really liked it. Everyone has something in common — to grow as educators. 

This is part of the collaborative work that is intended in [TeachUNITED’s] Mentors for Change: to give educators other instruments, techniques, new applications so they will also replicate [the training]. Because within their communities they are also leaders. 

STEM education is quite adaptable, and that’s the idea, that it adapts to the context. You can’t replicate what is done here in El Salvador in Cuba, for example. The educator needs to have those skills to adapt to their context, even within El Salvador. Each school is a world and we need to learn how, through the tools that the Mentors for Change program offers, we can do this.

Yohns: It’s a challenge. And it’s very exciting to us to be part of this challenge. We have 162 teachers, empowered leaders, passionate about education. And the challenge is to keep them empowered, involved in the process. 

Claudia Amaya: That’s right. There are no limits to this. And having allies like TeachUNITED, PhET simulations, like Big Change, and now with another ally. What it does is find the link between everyone to be able to grow education in Latin America.

Yohns: We are sure that you will achieve it, and that those 24,000 or more students will benefit. And it’s thanks to this idea, this initiative, this love for education.

Learn more about Claudia and her impressive work supporting teachers in the full podcast: