Principal Dr. Ann Bonitatibus and student Anna Lulushi of Thomas Jefferson High School for Science & Technology spoke about their STEM backgrounds and opportunities for students at the 2018 K-12 STEM Symposium. Lulushi highlighted the difficulty of being one of the few female students in higher-level math and science classes and how the pressure to be perfect inhibits learning.
For Lulushi, failure and imperfection are essential to growing as a STEM learner.
“There is no magic formula — you [should]go to school and take the classes you want to take, take the risk to take a class you’d never thought of…” Bonitatibus said.
Bonitatibus emphasized there’s no one path or magic formula for STEM success. Students should take risks and follow their passions, be it coding or creating predictive algorithms for music beats. Bonitatibus stressed the new STEM frontier is the integration of science, math and the humanities.
WashingtonExec is hosting the annual K-12 STEM Symposium on March 30, 2019. The event is free and open to the public, but attendees are asked to register in advance.
