It's a long held myth that educators spend the whole summer lounging by the pool and detach from teaching.  Many educators enjoy these benefits of summer but in Southeast Iowa, hundreds are also attending STEM professional development in one of the nine Iowa STEM Scale-Up programs.  These nine programs were selected through a rigorous process that recruited top notch programs shown to increase student interest and achievement in STEM.  After these programs were selected, in-school and out-of-school educators from across Iowa applied to receive the programs for their classrooms.

Since July 1, Southeast Iowa educators have been trained in the following scale-up programs: Engineer Your World, Computer Science Discoveries, STEM Innovator, Pint Size Science and Making STEM Connections.  Through this professional development, educators have engaged in hands-on learning ranging from civil engineering, entrepreneurship, design, app development and more.  The training and materials provided by the STEM Council and the Scale-Up providers will allow these educators to positively impact over 20,000 preK-12 students throughout the region.  The full list of awarded educators can be found here.