During my externship with Girl Scouts of Silver Sage, I was tasked with creating hands-on STEM educational experiences for girls of various age levels. My primary projects included developing the curriculum for the Fall, Winter, and Spring STEM camps, as well as creating the Girls Empowering the Future STEM Pathways for middle and high school students. The goal of these projects was to provide girls with meaningful, hands-on STEM experiences that build confidence, foster leadership, encourage problem-solving, and expose them to the wide variety of STEM careers available. Another key objective was to create ready-to-use, high-quality resources that volunteers, camp staff, and educators could easily implement.

Throughout my time at the host site, I developed complete multi-day camp curricula, including facilitator guides, student journals, STEM challenges, reflection activities, and supporting instructional materials. I also designed the Girls Empowering the Future STEM Pathways, which include multi-session experiences focused on engineering, environmental science, agriculture, healthcare, energy, manufacturing, and other STEM fields. These pathways emphasized real-world problem solving, collaboration, design thinking, and career exploration while giving girls opportunities to develop leadership and presentation skills.

This experience significantly impacted my knowledge of STEM education and the wide range of careers available within STEM fields. It reinforced the importance of exposing students to authentic, hands-on learning experiences at an early age so they can begin to see themselves in future STEM careers. As a classroom teacher, I now have a greater understanding of how to integrate project-based learning, career connections, and community partnerships into everyday instruction. This externship has strengthened my commitment to creating engaging learning experiences that promote curiosity, creativity, critical thinking, and collaboration while helping students recognize the many opportunities available to them in STEM.