This was my first year participating in this program and I was so impressed with my host and by extension, the whole Externship Program. I acknowledge that my experience might be unique and I was extremely fortunate and blessed to be paired with such an amazing host as the Idaho National Laboratory (INL) was, but if any of the other hosts were even half this great, the STEM Externship Program is fantastic.

For my host partner, INL, I got the opportunity to teach two months of four-day week STEM summer camp classes to students, grouped by grades 1-3, 5-8, with one group of High School students the very last week.

INL provided the lesson plans, pacing and hands on activities. The topic for this summer camp session was Nuclear Energy, and the initial Four light bulbs that were first lit by nuclear power, here in Idaho, on 12/21/51. We taught everything from basic building block of an atom, protons, neutrons, electrons, radiation wave types, building a “reactor” and how the energy is produced and transformed into electricity. The day was well broken up with snack times in the morning and the afternoon, as well as an hour for lunch which included an outdoor recess time for the students.

Each Monday, the three other instructors and I would get a different group of roughly 14 students. The camps began each day at 9 am when parents dropped students off and ended at 3 pm. An added surprise was that the INL has an additional program for former STEM camp students to be able to come back as camp aides for the instructors in the classroom and helping with all the behind the scenes activities….most importantly, the snack deliveries. That alone granted them “VIP status” with the camp students… and the instructors.

The instructors all taught the same concepts, but how we managed our classroom of students and how we might have adjusted depth, approach or anything else to facilitate the learning objectives of our groups each week was at our professional discretion. The classroom instruction time flew by each day and week. It was fun to teach these lessons and watch all of the students really enjoy their learning. We had the freedom to help each other get a concept approach that worked well for one of us and we also worked well together so that we could maximize the time for learning by “dividing and conquering” with the four groups of students rotating through two classrooms as two instructors in each classroom became “subject and activity matter experts” for the various topics.

As the week progressed, each day, the wrap up activity was for students to document through drawing and/or writing to be able to show and “teach” their parents about their learning during the week. On the fourth day of each week, students loaded up on an INL bus for a tour of EBR-1 on the INL desert site. It was fun for students to realize what the real components we were learning about looked like in real life. It definitely tied the in-class learning to the real world.

Some parents who worked at the other INL desert facilities, took the opportunity to come to EBR-1 and spend time with their own student, and their new camp classmate friends showing them similar things that the parent worked with in their job at heir INL facility. This was a great reinforcement and bonding experience for the parent to be able to discuss nuclear fission and energy topics with their child.

After returning to the classroom from our field trip tour, students finished their presentations for their parents and teachers spent time helping the students rehearse. It was rewarding to hear from the parents how much their students had shared after camp the previous days and how excited they were to do so and how impressed the parents were by all of the knowledge their students acquired in four short days.

I got the opportunity to meet new people in the industry from the hosts to the parents and even a few overseas visitors who also happened to be touring EBR-1 while our big group was there. I got the opportunity to be excited about simply teaching. The lessons were fun and engaging. Conveying the knowledge and creating the fun experiences planned was work, but it was the simple joys of engaging learners and watching their curious minds do their work and make connections to the world and other things they already know, plus the opportunity to learn in the moment something about a closely related topic students wondered about.

While EBR-1 might have first powered those four light bulbs decades ago, in the winter of 1951, there were way more “light bulb” moments of learning that happened at this STEM camp in the summer of 2026.