Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:00:00]:
Welcome, advocates, to another episode of the Leading Equity Podcast, a podcast that focuses on supporting educators with the tools and resources necessary to ensure equity at their skills. Today's special guest is miss Nicole Austin. So without further ado, Nicole, thank you so much for joining us today.

Nicole Austin [00:00:17]:
Thank you for having me. I really appreciate being on your platform.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:00:20]:
Oh, the pleasure is mine. We've kinda had an opportunity to talk a little bit before we hit record, and so I'm really excited for today's conversation. But before we get started, I'd love for you to share a little bit about yourself and what you currently do.

Nicole Austin [00:00:31]:
Great. Thank you so much. So my name is Nicole Auchin. I am currently the vice president of public affairs for the National Math and Science Initiative, and the National Math and Science Initiative is dedicated to elevating educators and expanding quality STEM education in schools across the nation. We provide professional development that is evidence based and high quality, and our programs really focus on strengthening teachers' skills and equipping them with the strategies that inspire the next generation of STEM professionals and innovators. As for my background, I am an engineer by trade. I went to Howard University. I got my bachelor's degree in computer systems engineering.

Nicole Austin [00:01:12]:
I spent 20 years as a marketer in business to business technology firms. I also have an MBA in marketing, but I definitely focus on the technology area. And for the past 7 years, I have been involved in in education from charter schools now to the National Math and Science Initiative, where I do support our STEM professional development programs.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:01:34]:
Wow. Okay. Well, let's let's listen. It sounds like I have a very qualified member on our panel today, so I'm excited to get into it. Here's the thing. I'm a school leader. Folks that's been listening probably are familiar. I went back into the schools, and so I'm a principal again, Charter High School in Phoenix, And I'm looking to possibly get a little bit more STEM emphasis at our schools.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:01:57]:
And I I I'm glad to be having this conversation with you because that is kinda where I would like to kinda get some ideas. And I'm just curious on your end, why do you think that or why would you support the idea of creating more of a STEM focus area within high schools or just in schools in general?

Nicole Austin [00:02:14]:
Well, that is such a great question, Sheldon. One of the reasons that we support STEM education and quality STEM education in schools is because if you look at the United States, and in fact, the globe, we have a deficit in STEM trained professionals today in our workforce. Yet technology, science, engineering, and math are only exploding across the workforce. And since the pandemic and in some cases before the pandemic, our kids are not meeting some of the basic qualifications and standards for math and science. So it is critically important that we upskill our kids, and the way that we believe we need to do that is by helping to upskill our educators. So if you're a school leader looking to create a STEM culture, one of the first things that I would recommend is invest in quality STEM professional development for your educators. As most of your audience probably knows, most educators come to the classroom through a literacy lens. Right? So and we're experiencing a teacher shortage right now.

Nichole Austion [00:03:27]:
So you may take that extra English teacher and ask them to teach math or take that extra English teacher and ask them to teach biology, but they haven't been adequately trained in that particular discipline. So the content and pedagogy is missing for them. That is one of the first places that we want school leaders to think about starting is find a quality STEM professional development organization that gives your teachers that hands on experience. And what we do is we also give them experience as both the student and the teacher, help them to be solid in that content, and then teach them that pedagogy so that they can feel confident in that classroom. Because as you all know, as leaders, they're dealing with much more than just content and pedagogy in the classroom. So if I'm confident in that, that is a great way for me to then have have to deal with some of the other things that I have to deal with in the classroom. The other thing that we help educators to do within districts and schools is look across their school system to understand where there are areas that they can increase access. So in one instance, when we're working with a school in Pennsylvania, we were because we always go in with an assessment.

Nicole Austin [00:04:46]:
We work with the district leaders or the school leaders to do an assessment. If it's a high school, we take a look at where are all your STEM classes, where are your AP classes, who has access to those. And in one school in Pennsylvania, what we found is every single AP STEM related class was directly scheduled directly across from all of the athletic training for their athletes. So that meant none of those athletes could then participate in an AP class or, in fact, a STEM class. So we worked with them to change that system because you're you're making those students choose, right, between this quality STEM and their STEM identity and their athletic identity, and we believe that students can do both. Right? So those are the types of things that we do at the National Math and Science Initiative, and those are the types of things that we recommend as we come in and work with districts and schools.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:05:40]:
I love this conversation. And it's got me thinking because so I'm a history teacher. You know, that that was my background. That's where I was at. And I love what you're saying, but I'm one of those people that, like, stayed away from science, technology, engineering, and definitely stayed away from mathematics. So if we're talking about changing the culture into a STEM culture, and I heard you mentioned, like, some of the literary side of things. So like my ELA folks, my history folks, How do we get them to to maybe open to the idea of embedding STEM within their curriculum?

Nicole Austin [00:06:18]:
Yeah. So, that's a really great question. And, we do also work across the disciplines to ensure that if you are that ELA teacher, that there are some ties with what you are teaching that go to math and science. So one example that I can think of in our most recent training, which was so exciting for us because the board of our organization was there, We had an ELA teacher who was doing a a a class with a group of educators, and it was on Henrietta Lacks. And if you don't know who Henrietta Lacks is, for those of your audience, she was a woman whose cells, cancer cells, were really some of the cells that have helped advance cancer treatments for everyone in the country. Right? And her cells were taken to from her without her knowledge. It's a whole story. Look up Henrietta Lacks.

Nicole Austin [00:07:12]:
But we have the ELE teacher teaching that course in English language to those our educators in the program. And they can take that particular story and apply it to biology. Right? There's a big tie. So how do you work together in ways that we through vertical teaming? Right? So if you're teaching that in the 9th grade, how do then you work with your biology teacher to incorporate a Henrietta Lacks story in biology and then also utilize that? What do they have? What do the kids have to know in 10th grade? Is there any relevancy to the Henrietta Lacks story and what you're teaching in biology to the standards that kids have to know in the 10th grade, 11th grade, 12th grade? So that's the kind of work that we do with schools is to say, alright. Maybe you may not see this tie, but let us help you bring this particular history lesson and English lang language arts lesson into the STEM realm.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:08:08]:
I can hear project based learning. Within all of this, I can hear a lot of different strategies for just collaboration amongst disciplines. So like you when you're doing your PLCs, for example, and having your math and English and everyone all in the same place and say, okay. Here's the unit that we're going to pursue. And, you know, we're gonna talk about Henrietta. And so this is what science side is gonna do, the math side is gonna do. I think all of that can make a lot of sense.

Nicole Austin [00:08:34]:
Absolutely. And it's a great way to bring the teachers together with other classroom teachers who are the coaches who implement our programs to kind of formulate that in a 3 or 4 day professional development training that's geared right for your school or district.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:08:51]:
K. Now this sounds all great, rainbows and and flowers and everything, but I know there's gonna be some teachers that are gonna resist this. You know what? I am not a STEM teacher, And so why are you making us sit through this PD? I don't want what type of again, I'm thinking from a school leader from a school leaders lens. Right. Let's just say again, this sounds great, Nicole, but let's just say that there are some folks that are resistant and say, this is not what I went to school for. I I wanna just teach history. I just wanna teach English. I just wanna teach PE.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:09:24]:
So what are some some ways to combat some of the resistance that or I guess, how do we how do we show the benefits of doing this or maybe just some ways to kind of get around any type of pushback we might get?

Nicole Austin [00:09:36]:
Right. So in terms of this type of training, there's a couple ways that we approach it. We do work directly with districts and schools. And in that instance, you know, we know that principals like yourself will be telling the teachers what to do. So I think a couple differentiators from our trainings are, number 1, it is not just a sit and get. You are not just going to be listening to Charlie Brown's teacher, right, tell you about biology or math or chemistry. You're actually going to be hands on with the very lessons that you are going to be teaching. You're going to have an understanding of not only what the content is, but how to most effectively put that pedagogy in place, and you're gonna do it.

Nicole Austin [00:10:22]:
You're gonna stand up from front of the classroom, and you're gonna be the teacher, and then you're gonna switch roles with some of your fellow teachers, and and you're gonna be the student. You're gonna understand where they need to struggle with a particular set of instructions, where that critical reasoning comes in. I mean, I keep thinking about a training that we did in Atlanta called new teacher academy, and we do have trainings that a segment of our training that can be for very new teachers where one of our coaches had the entire class of her teachers out in the hallway, and they were doing a measurement exercise. And every one of those teachers was doing the exercise alongside one another. And so it's more hands on. So that's one differentiator. I think the other thing is the fact that we have those coaches year round. So you don't have to leave our in person training, content workshop, and feel like you don't have support.

Nicole Austin [00:11:15]:
We have coaches that stay with your teachers during the school year for just in time training, just in time problem solving. And they are teachers in the classroom. So it's not like you're calling somebody who's been out of the classroom for 12 years, and they're not really familiar with what's going on. All of our coaches are experts because they're currently in the classroom. So you have that support. You have that community. And there are several schools that we work with where we might have a biology teacher who's the only biology teacher in his or her building, and it's so critical to have that community. The other thing that we provide are our supports for teachers.

Nicole Austin [00:11:55]:
So there are lessons that you can pull from. There are materials that you can pull from. All of those kinds of things are available in in addition to your coach. So I think that's a big differentiator. The other thing for district administrators to think about if you're wanting to build a sim culture is the idea of building a train the trainer system. And we're doing that now in the state of Louisiana, where we started with 35 teachers. Those teachers were trained on how to go back to their districts and schools and be that resource as a STEM, educator professional. And then they will take that to their colleagues, and they will help to build that STEM culture within their schools.

Nicole Austin [00:12:38]:
And we're actually expanding that work in Louisiana. So lots of different ways to do it with your individual school or within your district or within your state like we're doing within the state of Louisiana.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:12:50]:
Alright. Thank you. So let's let's talk about incorporating our students because one of the things that we wanna make sure is that we're student centered. Right? So sometimes I think as leaders, as adults in general, like, we tend to feel like we know what's best for our kids. And so we create all of these different things. Oh, we're gonna do all the PDs for teachers. We're gonna do this. We're gonna do that.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:13:12]:
And not have any sort of student input within these these change models. And so it might go well, but it probably could be a lot better if we incorporate a lot of our student feedback. So let's talk about it from the student side of things. What are some things that we're learning from students or how are we how can we incorporate students within this process of creating that STEM culture?

Nicole Austin [00:13:36]:
Yes. So one of the things that we definitely focus in on in all of our teacher professional development is culturally responsive education. We wanna make sure that if you are a diverse teacher or even a white teacher in a diverse school, that you can reach those kids with the language and the culture that they're most familiar with. And I'm bringing to mind a story from one of our coaches who was teaching in a predominantly Latino school, and she was teaching math. And by learning what we were teaching her through our professional development, she recognized that lots of their students live in multigenerational homes, and the students were very involved in working with their grandmothers and cooking. So what better way to help the students understand mathematics than to incorporate a lesson that talks about cooking with your grandmother and learning about fractions through measurement. And that is something that that teacher would not have been exposed to had she not participated in our culturally responsive education module. So that is one of the ways that we wanna make sure we're helping teachers to reach those students is to have that cultural relevancy in all as as many lessons as they can can have it in.

Nicole Austin [00:14:58]:
The other thing that we want to make sure of as we're taking a look at our student population and we don't necessarily seldom get feedback from the students except when it comes from assessments. And we do talk to our teachers about, you know, including the students, but we really look at our assessments. So one of our most recent assessments was on what we call the middle school longitudinal study. And it was a study done with an assessment called CR for CR, which is critical reasoning for college readiness. It was developed for us by Berkeley. And we take that measurement in the beginning of the school year and at the end of the school year. And what we found, we asked the students to talk about their STEM identity at the beginning of the semester and at the end. And what we saw was a marked increase in students feeling more like a STEM student, and it's a student who could pursue a STEM degree, especially in our black students and especially in our Latino students.

Nicole Austin [00:16:03]:
And our students who were characterized as furthest behind, right, really also increased their their feeling of STEM identity. And so by including those students, by making sure that the teacher has that content and pedagogy and also that cultural understanding, we're creating more students who can actually see themselves as STEM professionals, which is so critical when you start looking at the numbers of STEM professionals across historically marginalized groups, across women, across students who are affected by poverty. So the more those teachers are trained, the more those students are gonna start to see themselves as STEM professionals.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:16:46]:
Tell me more about the STEM identity. What does that mean? I I because I have a idea in my mind as far as what that could look like, but I I just wanna make sure I'm clear. So can you dig into that a little bit more as far as what the STEM identity looks like?

Nicole Austin [00:16:59]:
Yes. So STEM identity has to do with your being able to feel that you can grasp and execute the skills that are critical in STEM, whether that's critical thinking, whether that's problem solving, whether that's collaboration. It also has to do with you being able to see yourself in a STEM profession. Right? You no longer walk into a math classroom as a female student saying you can't be good at math. Right? It also has to do with the examples that the students are exposed to, whether it's an astronaut Joan Higginbotham or whether it is, you know, Victor Glover. I like astronauts. I'm gonna do a lot of astronaut references. But making sure that this the students have role models and people to look up to as well as being encouraged to, you know, have a setback, as we say.

Nicole Austin [00:17:55]:
We don't say failure. We have have a setback. You can have a setback in math and still be an engineer right here. Right? So you can still do those things. So we wanna kind of strip away some of those negative feelings and emotions that you can't succeed in STEM or that you have to be an a student to succeed in STEM. No. You're gonna take those skill sets. You're gonna learn those.

Nicole Austin [00:18:17]:
You're gonna have setbacks. You're gonna have to apply the lessons, and you can be a STEM professional. There are no barriers to that, especially in terms of the skill sets that you can gain with the proper teaching. You can be a STEM professional. So that's kind of what we are are looking for, and we have a formal definition which I can pull out for your audience later. But that those are some of the elements of STEM identity.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:18:42]:
Okay. I I got you. Thank you. And and I one of the things I I pulled from your response was the critical thinking side of things. Because I can imagine I know we can give an assessment and, yeah, here's your STEM identity. But at the end of the day, there's gonna be some students that STEM is not gonna be their field. Or, you know, some of these STEM careers might require college degrees. And so that may that may not be their direction.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:19:05]:
But it does give you other skill knowledge such as critical thinking. Are there some other skills that we're going to be able to find out from this STEM identity outside of the STEM career field of of things?

Nicole Austin [00:19:19]:
Yes. Absolutely. So some of the other skills that we want to impress upon our students are things like collaboration. If you think about some of the ways that students are educated today, they are sitting and getting. Right? We want students to be collaborative. We want because who works alone? Right? I know. Who works alone? Right? Nobody work I don't work alone. I have a team.

Nicole Austin [00:19:45]:
So it's collaboration. It's teamwork. It's really infusing that curiosity as well because we want it. That's the whole premise of the scientific theory is is is theorems. Right? You know, how do you how do you do this? Let's try this. I'm reminded of a book that my my son had where the little girl in the book was experimenting with all kinds of things, including, like, you know, could you just have ketchup for every meal? Right? So so we want them to really lean into all the skills, including communication, creativity, and problem solving. So we really want to stress all of those skills as we are teaching. And we start with those educators to help them to infuse that into their classroom and give them the tools to help those students gain those skills and understand that you're learning to communicate.

Nicole Austin [00:20:40]:
But it's important to tell your teammate when you're getting ready to light the bunsen burner. It might be important. It might be important for you to collaborate on this particular mathematical formula. Right? You wanna be a team together to solve a particular problem. And if something's not working quite quite right with your experiment, go ahead and talk to your teammate. And maybe you can brainstorm and figure out how to solve that thing together. That's real world in almost every profession. I know you go to conferences.

Nicole Austin [00:21:12]:
I go to conferences. And one of the things that we love about doing that is getting with other professionals. Understand, hey. You know, I'm having this challenge in my building. Have you had this challenge, and how have you solved it? So I don't see that there's any place that we don't need those skills. Even if you don't pursue a STEM career, you're gonna need that in life. So we wanna make sure that we are helping our educators to do that and subsequently helping our students as well.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:21:37]:
Listen. I I you know, when you said that no one works by themselves these days, that really hit home. And here's why. I've been doing a lot of research. I'm writing a I have I got another book that I'm working on right now, and it's all about our traditional school settings are set up where, you know, you got you still have classrooms where the the desks are in one row, and, you know, everyone's taught to work independently. We're we're training our kids to to work on the individual basis of things, you know, your GPAs and honor rolls. Like, all that stuff is individualized. Valedictorian.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:22:11]:
Right? These things are competition. But then when they graduate from high school, they're gonna enter into some workforce where they're gonna be in teams. Even if they go in the military, whatever they do, they're gonna be put into teams. So where's the disconnect between what's happening from the classroom level and into when they become adults? There's there that the teamwork is just not being enforced like it should be.

Nicole Austin [00:22:35]:
It's not. And then we wonder when we get into the working world why this person is not a good teamwork team member. Why don't they trust me here? It was never built. Perhaps if you put if you play sports, but you need that in the working environment. As I said, I'm an astronaut person. I know several astronauts.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:22:53]:
One of

Nicole Austin [00:22:54]:
the biggest things that they do is they take them out, and they do teamwork. They're out in the wilderness. They're underwater. It's stressed so heavily that you have to rely on each other. In this situation, it's life or death. But we all need to do it's in every facet of our lives. So we really do believe that, you know, we infuse that into our quality STEM professional development, and we want those teachers to at least have some elements of that. And it's so critical for work in STEM, but really work in general.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:23:26]:
Got you. Alright. So I love that you hone in on the coach responsiveness, and there's a lot of work that I've been doing as well. And one of the things I try to tell folks because sometimes we get to the math subject and then they're like, woah, I I can't be culturally responsible with formulas. And and I try to your face. But I get that. Right? It's it's I personally feel like it's just a a excuse to not incorporate cultural responsiveness. Right? Especially depending on the demographics of the teachers that I'm working with.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:23:58]:
They'll say, oh, we can't do that in math. Formulas are formulas. Equations are equations. And I try to educate educators about, okay, just changing names on your word problems to, you know, Pablo and and and and Juan does not make you a culturally responsive teacher. There's a lot more to it. I kinda wanna touch on the math side of things, if possible, in regards to cultural responsiveness. Is that something that you've seen as well, like, kinda a struggle or pushback for individuals maybe in those math fields that are saying, well, I can't be culturally responsive as a math teacher.

Nicole Austin [00:24:33]:
Yeah. I don't know that we have necessarily seen a lot of pushback, but I could see where you're you're coming from. And I think one of the things that I'm passionate about is, you know, also these children seeing themselves in the math, but also in the books about math. So one of my projects has been my book, which is called Miles and the Math Monster. And it's right behind me there. And it's about a young boy who is in a classroom, who goes to the board to do his standard mathematical problem, and the operators and the numbers become monsters. Right? So he's afraid of math, terrified. But he is his mom takes him out, and she starts showing him the world, and he sees math all around the world.

Nicole Austin [00:25:22]:
And that is one of the things that you know, it sounds like a really simple concept, but the little boy in the book is an African American boy. So seeing yourself is important as well as having your culture be important. But our son had his first African American male teacher, I was so proud of myself, in the 6th grade. So I was so excited. I was like, yes. You have mister Smith for math. And the things that mister Smith had on his spreadsheet because on on his worksheets was all about, you know, the things that my son was interested in, whether it was an example from Fortnite, right, which they all play Fortnite, or Roblox or something about the shoes. It was still teaching the concepts, but it was in a way in which they could relate to those concepts.

Nicole Austin [00:26:10]:
And I think you can do that at any level. Math is not a one. It's a language, first of all. Let's talk about that. Math is a language. So we have to learn the language of math in everyday life, and you can incorporate that into any culture. It doesn't matter where you grow up. If you think outside of the United States, how many math teachers around the world are incorporating culture and language and mathematics in areas that are doing much better job of getting math progression with their students than we are? So we've got to do the work and and lean in hard to understand that we can reach every student.

Nicole Austin [00:26:46]:
We just have to figure out the ways in which we can reach every student.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:26:50]:
Mic drop. I love that. You you got bars today, Nicole. I can't believe that you have a book. You didn't even mention that. Like, wait, are you not going to tell me that you got a book? And it's a math book. So, okay. All right.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:27:02]:
So what's the name of it again?

Nicole Austin [00:27:04]:
It's called Miles and the Math Monsters. So, yeah, it's available, yeah, on standard platforms, Amazon, Goodreads, and I have a website, Nicole Auchin Books as well. But, yeah, it's a great little book.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:27:15]:
You just you just not going okay. So it's what age level would you recommend that book for?

Nicole Austin [00:27:20]:
It's age 5 to 10. So and if you have a child struggling in math, if if you feel like those you know, the way in which they see numbers is a little challenging, I encourage you to get this book. It does a great job of really math in his everyday life and starts to really love numbers. Great little read for any child who's in that age range suffering from math anxiety.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:27:42]:
Okay. Alright. Well, we'll leave links in the show notes, folks, if you wanna grab yourself a copy and support Nicole. Thank you for sharing that. Listen. I'll say this. I I have learned a lot, again, as a school leader myself and and as an individual who just loves the opportunities to learn how I can be better as an educator as well. I've learned a lot, but I'd love for you to take us home with one final word of advice to our listeners.

Nicole Austin [00:28:04]:
Yeah. So, you know, this is really aimed at school leaders and district leads. This is a profession. Y'all know it's a profession. Please invest in those teachers. Invest in your teachers. Give them quality professional development, quality STEM professional development. They can do the work.

Nicole Austin [00:28:24]:
They just need the support in place. Invest in vertical teaming. Help the 5th grade teacher understand what those students need in the 8th grade so that he or she can take those skills and incorporate them so those students will be ready. Make sure that you are investing in the culturally responsive education if you have a diverse group. Even if you don't have a diverse group. Right? We all need to learn about each other's culture. And then look across your systems. Work with an organization like the National Math and Science Initiative to understand how you can better and build your STEM culture in your organization.

Nicole Austin [00:29:05]:
It's only gonna benefit your students, and it's gonna benefit the broad world. We are woefully behind in terms of the number of STEM professionals that we have in the United States. And we've got this CHIPS and Science Act. We have industry that's building plants all over our country, and they need workers. And we, as educators, need to be the ones who are getting these kids ready for economic mobility, for innovation, because we're only going further above this planet. As you all know, space economy is also coming. So we've got to get the kids ready, and we need every mind, every heart that has a willingness to be in STEM to participate because it's going to make our world better. So invest in those educators.

Nicole Austin [00:29:55]:
You will see the results in your students, and we will see the results not just in our country, but in our world.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:30:06]:
Okay. Nicole, why are you he dropping bars today. Okay. Alright. Well, well, if we have some folks that wanna connect with you, what's the best way to reach you online?

Nicole Austin [00:30:16]:
So I am at the National Math and Science Initiative. You can connect with me at marketing at nms.org. You can also connect with me through my website, which is nicoleaushenbooks.com. And I'm on LinkedIn as well. So feel free to reach out at any of those platforms, forms, and I'd be more than happy to hear from you.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:30:38]:
Alright. Links in the show notes. Nicole, thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate you.

Nicole Austin [00:30:43]:
Thank you, Sheldon. It was a pleasure having this conversation.

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