Türkiye hosts 4 million refugees. About 1 million of these refugees are students in schools in Turkey. At the school where I teach, 5 percent of the students are refugee students. My observations showed that there are communication barriers between Turkish students and refugee students. Refugee students were communicating with their groups.
STEM Stands Together emerged from the idea of using the STEM approach as a common language among students. I tried to support both their academic skills and social-emotional skills by inviting students to STEM workshops in groups of 2 (1 Turkish, 1 refugee student in each group). After the first pilot study, we started to observe the students together with my colleagues. We have observed that students get to know each other before, greet each other, establish new friendships, and spend time together outside of school. Moreover, there was also an increase in the academic achievement of students. Seeing the idea work made me and my colleagues happy. STEM has been a very popular approach in recent years and was used in this project as a language that breaks students' communication barriers. Students both learned and made new friendships. We also included technology in the learning process, especially by using challenge-based learning.
After the solution received 3 international awards, it suddenly became popular and was applied in many schools in Turkey. To date, more than 1200 students have met with STEM and formed new friendships while learning. It was a turning point when the project was awarded the New Learning and Teachin Award organized by the ETF in November 2022. The project was awarded a grant under the Education Resilience in Europe. With this grant, the project will spread first in Turkey and then all over the world. Türkiye leg is about to be completed. Project ambassador teachers applied the learning scenarios they prepared in their lessons. Thanks to these learning scenarios and the project implementation guide, teachers anywhere in the world will be able to easily implement the project in their classroom.
What makes this project unique is that it is easy to implement, easy to adapt and low cost. Within the scope of the project, 30 different learning scenarios were prepared and translated into English. Thanks to these scenarios, a teacher anywhere in the world can easily implement the project by reviewing the application guide. All they have to do is contact me and say STEM Stands Together...
