 In a classroom, you always have the kids who sit in the back. You always have the kids who try and get away with, maybe the teacher won't call on me to read. But when we have these hands-on experiments, everyone's held accountable, pushed out of their comfort zone. When you're trying to prepare them for what's coming down the pipe, it definitely involves a lot of technology in their future, and that's just the one piece that we really don't have access to in public schools. My desktop computer is over 10 years old. Some of the textbooks that we have in the building are from before the turn of the last century. Lack of funding is usually the reason why we don't get to do a lot of things we want to do. We are a school district with very limited resources. I am very grateful for the NEA Foundation. Not only dollars and grant opportunities, but also expertise. To be able to do that is especially important in a school district like ours. STEM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics. It's a push for us to purposefully include more opportunities for students to introduce technology and engineering practices into their education so that they're ready for the next step. Teachers don't always have time to collaborate cross-content. So my job as the STEM coordinator, I work with the department heads, figuring out what are you doing now and how can we help connect that more to STEM? How can we give you more industry resources? And how can we push kids from a regular science class into a career as a scientist? We used to think of learning things like you learn the skill, and then you can apply the skill in the world, and kids just don't think that way. You see a problem in the world, and then you have to find a way to solve it. And oftentimes that solution is not necessarily in a book. We're preparing children for careers that we don't even know what they are. They don't even exist. We know that STEM is going to be an important piece of that. STEM education is, I feel at the heart of being a human, we're meant to be creative. All of us want to make sense of the world, and we want to bring our dream into reality. Our teachers are our greatest resource. That classroom teacher is the only person who can actually do the job of meeting the needs of those children in that classroom. And investment in teachers is the most important investment we can make. I've had many, many opportunities to see the power of what education can do for children. There is no more important work we can do than be in education. I asked the kids to work to become something more than they are today, and teachers need to do the same thing. The kids are changing. I need to be changing too. When I grow up, I'm thinking about being a doctor. I want to be a pediatrician. I want to be a nurse when I grow up, like my mom. I want to be an airline pilot.