This year in STEM Foundations class I have learned to be a better communicator. Communication is one of the STEM School's 5 qualities which means we really value it and try to teach it through everything we do. In STEM Foundations we do a lot with communication.

A while ago, my partner for the project, Sam Bartnik and I wrote and illustrated a storybook for little kids from grades 3 to 5 to teach them wellness topics like effective communication. After we finished and printed our books, we wanted to donate them to organizations where they would be read by kids. My partner and I chose to send our book to the Beavercreek Police Department. In order to get the book to them though, we had to communicate with them. We did this via phone call. In STEM Foundations we had to learn how to make a professional phone call and practiced it many times. A professional phone call is when you call someone, probably some sort of important person like a business man or partner, or a principal of a school or other organization, sometimes maybe a representative for a company, people like that. Professional phone calls always include formal and proper language, like no slang words that don’t really exist and are made up like, “sup” or “yo”. You also want to use correct grammar like “I saw him” instead of “I seen him”. When we did the phone call, we made a checklist for things to record/talk about while on the phone, like the date, the person you talked to, follow up information, if they will take your book or not, things that would help us remember how the phone call went, how we could reach them and our plans for the future. I learned so many new things about being professional through tone of voice, like how you always want to sound happy and accepting of whatever they’re saying. Even if they said they wouldn’t accept our book we needed to thank them for their time. Also about taking the right notes and knowing what to say. All of these things have helped me grow into a better person and a better communicator.

Another thing I learned in STEM Foundations class that has helped me as a student become better at communication would be in the SF composition notebook where we write down all of the notes about the lessons we learn in class. My notebook is really special to me because I refer to it all of the time and I make things really easy for me to find. I use lots of colors and decorations to make the notebook look like I care. Some of the lessons in it that helped me grow were the passive vs. active advocacy entries. Passive means that you aren’t really getting involved, you’re just letting someone chew your food for you and then you swallow it. It’s like in class you listen to what the teacher says but you only think about what they’re saying, not about how you could use the information. Being active is the opposite, you are getting very involved with what you are doing. Like you get yourself a bowl of food and you chewed it up and then spit it right back out. You listen to what the teacher says and you think about it in as many ways as you can. Advocacy is to stand up for yourself, ask questions and make yourself heard. We learned about passive activity and active activity so that we knew we had to be active when we advocate and that we know how to. On page 19 in my notebook, the entry is “Passive vs. Active” here you can see I wrote notes about “getting O.V.E.R. it”