Innovation in STEM Education: Preparing Students for an Ever- Changing World | Dr. Jennifer Berry

How can STEM education keep pace with a rapidly changing world? In this episode of The Brighter Side of Education, host Dr. Lisa Hassler explores innovative approaches to STEM learning with Dr. Jennifer Berry, CEO of SmartLab.

This conversation examines how authentic, project-based STEM experiences help students build STEM identity, develop problem-solving skills, and see real connections between classroom learning and future careers. Drawing on research, classroom examples, and real-world applications, Dr. Berry explains why purpose matters more than tools—and how productive struggle, community partnerships, and industry-aligned learning environments can expand access and opportunity for all students.

Listeners will gain insight into:

• Why STEM identity is critical for student engagement and persistence

• How real-world problems strengthen learning outcomes

• Ways schools can integrate STEM without overhauling entire systems

• The role of educators, facilitators, and communities in equitable STEM access

• Preparing students with human skills that matter in an AI-driven future

Whether you’re an educator, school leader, parent, or policymaker, this episode offers research-grounded strategies for preparing students for careers that don’t yet exist—while keeping learning meaningful, inclusive, and future-ready.

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Sponsored by Dr. Gregg Hassler Jr., DMD
Trusted dental care for healthy smiles and stronger communities—building brighter futures daily.

Head to the show notes to find if this episode is CPD eligible and details on how to claim your CPD certification!

Sponsored by Dr. Gregg Hassler Jr., DMD
Trusted dental care for healthy smiles and stronger communities—building brighter futures daily.

Chapters

• 0:38 Framing The STEM Challenge
• 1:32 Why Integrated STEM Matters
• 3:03 Introducing Dr. Jennifer Berry
• 3:37 What Smart Lab Actually Does
• 4:18 Defining And Building STEM Identity
• 5:28 Industry Pathways Over Tools
• 6:11 K–5 Lessons With Real Purpose
• 10:44 Facilitators And Productive Struggle
• 11:59 Community Partnerships That Last
• 13:21 Turnkey STEM Identity Day
• 15:05 Funding Access And Equity
• 18:20 Beyond Gadgets: Human Skills In An AI World
• 20:55 Reflection And Calls To Action

Transcript

Dr. Lisa Hassler: 0:19

As technology transforms industries at unprecedented rates, how can our education system keep up? Today we'll explore innovative approaches to STEM education that are preparing students not just with technical skills, but with the adaptability and creative problem-solving abilities needed for careers that don't even exist yet. Welcome to the brighter side of education, research, innovation, and resources. I'm your host, Dr. Lisa Hassler, here to enlighten and brighten the classrooms in America through focused conversation on important topics in education. In each episode, I discuss problems we as teachers and parents are facing and what people are doing in their communities to fix it. What are the variables? And how can we duplicate it to maximize student outcomes? STEM as we know it today began in the early 2000s. The acronym STEM was coined by the National Science Foundation and refers to the subject areas of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. However, STEM education isn't just about teaching these subjects in isolation. It's about creating an integrated approach that helps students apply scientific concepts to real-world problems, use technology as a tool for innovation, employ engineering design processes to create solutions and leverage mathematical thinking to analyze and solve challenges. The case for transforming STEM education is strong. The COVID-19 pandemic erased two decades of progress in mathematics education. Schools face shortages of qualified STEM teachers, and STEM occupations are projected to grow three times faster than non-STEM jobs. But there is good news. When students work on authentic problems using professional tools and processes, when they see clear connections to careers that offer economic mobility, and when they develop the identity of I'm someone who does STEM or I'm someone who belongs in STEM, outcomes improve, academic achievement rises, engagement increases, and persistence improves, especially for students historically excluded from STEM opportunities. These are some of the innovative approaches to STEM education that don't require waiting for perfect conditions or complete system transformation. Here to discuss innovation in STEM education is Dr. Jennifer Barry, CEO of Smart Lab, a turnkey solution to STEM instruction with more than 30 years of experience in educational technology. Dr. Berry was recently recognized for Women Making History in STEM 2025 and is committed to transforming the lives of future generations through innovative, career-focused STEM education solutions. Dr. Berry, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for inviting me. Can you start us off by telling us a little bit more about Smart Lab?

SPEAKER_01: 3:16

Oh, I'd love to do that. Well, at Smart Lab, we have an integrated ecosystem that sparks aha moments and builds STEM identity for learners. So when they get into their careers, they will be successful in any industry that they choose. And we know through neuroscience that the more aha moments that you get, all these sudden realizations where you see how your idea can actually make an impact, when you get multiples of those, that's what builds a STEM identity. And we do that through an integrated ecosystem comprised of everything from a customized STEM learning environment to a hands-on project-based tools and equipment and curriculum to an incredible smart lab certified facilitator. And then, of course, partnership from the community.

Dr. Lisa Hassler: 3:57

You talked about STEM identity. Can you go a little bit more into what is it and why is it so important?

SPEAKER_01: 4:02

STEM identity is about a student's belief that they belong and that their ideas add value and they can master rigorous challenges. Not always doing things right all the time sometimes makes you better the next time you go about it. Failure is part of the learning process, and that ability to kind of work through challenges in a productive way can really get you to the other side. And that mastering of rigorous challenges and that feeling that you're successful in your ability to master rigorous challenges is what we have identified as STEM identity, which therefore then makes a student successful. So what we do in the STEM learning environment with hands-on project-based learning is to encourage and support that failure to ensure that it can get to the other side of success. In our curriculum, we talk about industry pathways. Every industry that you can think of uses STEM applications in the industry. And so we want to have students confident in using the STEM applications that can apply to any industry, but also be able to pick and choose which STEM application would be applicable to a problem that they're trying to solve.

Dr. Lisa Hassler: 5:09

When I was teaching, it was difficult to balance the curriculum with engineering and real-world problem-solving experiences that would be on the level of a first or second grader skills. And so, can you give an example of a lesson that you would have used and what impactful outcome that you've seen?

SPEAKER_01: 5:30

Yeah, I'm going to name two briefly because I think they're powerful. One is for a kindergarten unit, and then another one is more fourth and fifth grade units. You can either have a STEM lab that is separate than the core curriculum, or it could be pulled into the core curriculum and connected. What we like to say is there's random acts of STEM that ignite learning, get kids interested. So they get to play with something that's fun. So there's a unit called Shadows in Motion. And it's it's part of a social studies and or science curriculum. So the random acts of STEM and that the application that these kids get to use is a 3D pen. So when the children get the 3D pen, they get to just play with it. So it's, oh, can I make this thing go up? Can I make a box? That's the sparking and igniting their interest in this 3D pen. Then we really talk about shadows and motion and how utilizing a 3D printer or 3D pen to build something that creates shadowing against something else. So we might talk about, you know, building a city and thinking about how your city is structured and ensuring that the sidewalks have shade on one side of the street and sun on the other side of the street. How tall are the buildings going to be? And how does the sun hit the buildings and impact the one side of the street versus the other, right? Because we don't want all of your community to always be in the hot sun, you know, things of that nature. I have a quick story to that. So my daughter has a smart lab in her school. She's a fifth grader. And I had a group of fifth grade kids in my car the other day and they were gibber jabbering. So of course I go, So I know you did Smart Lab today. What was interesting about that? One of the kids said, Oh, we got to do these 3D pens. That was really exciting. Another one goes, Yeah, did you know that when they design a baseball field, they think about where they put the away team and make sure that the away team has the sun in their eyes. And as the architect is designing this, they're thinking about where the sun is coming from. And then they're making sure that the shadow is cast over the home team and not for the away team. And I thought, wow, here they were originally saying, oh yeah, we got to play with these cool 3D pens. And then they were talking about shadows in motion, but more importantly, they were talking about an industry because they were talking about architecture and stadium development and they were talking about sports. And so when I think about how to build in STEM into the curriculum, think less about the tool and think more about the industry and the real world application, because that's what gets excited. And then you can backtrack into the tool. So the other example I have is a kindergarten unit. And this unit is really fun because they code and they get to do it for their appropriate age level. We give them tiles. And when they put the tiles down, they put this little car down and it knows if it's green to go, if it's yellow to pause, if it's red to stop. And then there's some arrows, you can go right and left. And they can lay these tiles on the floor and see if they can get their car to go the direction that they want it to go. That's fun, right? That's fun play. Then what we do in the unit is talk about so there's farms that need to get their food from the farms to a store or to a farmer's market or to a factory in order to package it up to get onto a shelf that a per person can purchase and eventually gets to your refrigerator. So your job is to figure out how to get this car that you're gonna code to be self-driving to get from the farm to the table or from the farm to the farmer's market or from the farm to the grocery store. So really having them go, okay, so it isn't just me trying to figure out how to get this car with these tiles from point A to point B. I have a purpose. I am getting food from this farm to this place. And then, of course, they get to put the cute little chickens and the cows in one place and the vegetables in one place, and then put the grocery store wherever they're trying to get it to in another. And then they have to figure out how to code this little car through these tiles that they get to put on the ground in order to get there. So that's another example again of trying to make sure that you're not just doing the STEM lesson for the STEM piece of it, but making sure that there's a point, there's a purpose, and there's a goal. And we watch these kindergartners when they do this unit light up because then when they're talking to their parents afterwards, they're not talking about like I learned how to code today. They can say, Do you know there's such a thing as a self-driving car? Do you know that I know how to code a self-driving car? Do you know that there's a job out there that figures out how to get food from farm to grocery store? That's a more exciting conversation with a kindergartner than quite how to code. Same thing with the shadows of motion. Aha moments were happening for these kids, which will then again build their STEM identity. So they are confident in the tools they use and the applications that are connected to that.

Dr. Lisa Hassler: 10:25

With technology advancements happening so rapidly now, how do you stay on top of bringing those technologies into the classroom and then being able to support teachers in using them?

SPEAKER_01: 10:37

One of the components of our ecosystem is our Smart Lab certified facilitator. And what we do from somebody that was a librarian and has never done STEM all the way up to a science teacher that is maybe has their master's in STEM education. We make sure that those educators are comfortable with the kits and equipment, comfortable with the curriculum, and really most comfortable with ensuring the students are having productive struggle, asking the right questions so you're not answering the question for the student or you're not solving them before the student. Maybe asking just a couple of questions to redirect and ensure that student feels safe, but walking away so the student actually does maybe have a little bit of struggle and feels okay with that struggle so that they can think of another idea to get past what's not working for them. And so we work hard, not just to teach people how to use our curriculum and how to use the tools and equipment, but really how to ask the right questions to students and to put the right problems in front of students and hit that limit of productive struggle where they're not getting into the I give up mode.

Dr. Lisa Hassler: 11:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 11:40

Many times educators get overwhelmed and think, oh, I have to do this all myself. Right. And the beautiful thing of STEM is that that's the one place that people want to volunteer because they either know the application themselves, it's hands-on learning, so they can get in and play with it as well with the students, and they can connect it to their real world. They can connect it to their real jobs. And so we at Smart Lab, one of our components again is support and partnership. And part of that partnership piece is giving school districts, giving educators turnkey ways to bring the community in to support the students. And when you do that, you are making it a community approach to learning, whether they're being they're coming in to mentor or they're coming in to maybe provide resources to the school and to the educator to buy some of the cool new kits and equipment, is really important because that's what creates that sustainable development for the teacher as well as for the students. And then it gives a perspective for the community to see that they can also be part of the children's learning environment and be a part of the children's growth. And we help by getting business leaders into the environment to volunteer to provide turnkey ways for them for the community to come in and support STEM applications and STEM learning for the students.

Dr. Lisa Hassler: 12:57

You talked about turnkey way. So what do you mean by turnkey?

SPEAKER_01: 13:00

Well, I have a great example. We have STEM Identity Day, and STEM Identity Day is in is in recognition of national STEM Day that is across the world. And we wanted schools to be involved. So we've provided a toolkit for schools, and it you don't have to be a smart lab school to do this. You could be any school. We have free resources on our website that anybody can go to. A turnkey tool for the school to say, oh, okay, here's how I can invite the community. Here's a template email that I can send out to my parents. Here's a template email that I can send out to businesses. Here's a script when the business leader comes in, a CEO comes in that they can do with the students. They can talk about their own STEM identity, they can talk about STEM applications that they use in their career, they can talk about their career, and then they can participate with the students in maybe a STEM activity. So we provide these turnkey assets that they can give to the students and to the volunteers. Because sometimes school districts want the volunteers to come in, but they don't quite know what they would be doing with the students. What exactly would they be doing? And I know teachers always have parent volunteers come in, room parents and the like come in and help. But then the teacher is responsible to figuring out, okay, I have three parents in here. What am I going to have them do? So when the adult comes in, parent or community member or business leader, that they know exactly what they're going to do and how to help and exactly how to engage with the students and tell their story so they can be mentors for the students as well. You can go on our website and check us, check it out and register your school. And or if you're a volunteer that's like, I want to get into a school and talk about my STEM identity, you can also join us on that website and it's all free and we're excited to get STEM identity into as many schools as possible across the country.

Dr. Lisa Hassler: 14:43

Where would they find that? SmartLab Learning.com. So in what ways are you creating equal access to project-based learning for students in STEM careers?

SPEAKER_01: 14:52

Yeah. So that also has to do with the community, right? Because some school districts have budgets to pay for a full, you know, ecosystem with all the bells and whistles, all the kits, all the equipment, all the training. And there's some schools that are under-resourced and can't even afford to even put anything STEM into their school district. And so what we do is partner with the community. STEM Identity Day is a great example. Get the community in so they can also see what the resources are in the school. And then maybe say, does the school district have a way that we can contribute our dollars to make sure that STEM is embedded into this school district? So we also help facilitate that. We because they're not investing in us directly, they're investing in the school. They're investing in their community. So if you're if you're in a community with a school that's under-resourced or in your in a community of a school that's, you know, highly resourced, really thinking about how do you want to contribute to that? Do you want to help the school in your local community? Do you want to help a school in a community that maybe is under-resourced? Do you want to help a school across the country, particular types of schools, rural schools, urban schools? Where do you businesses, CEOs, foundation, philanthropy philanthropists want to contribute to ensuring that students are ready for the future and that are set up for success with the STEM identity so they can be the future leaders that we all want them to be? And we will help facilitate that. So if people also go on our website, they can ask for more information and we can help match them with schools so that they can donate to those schools and say, when they're donating, hey, we want you to use these funds and these dollars to put in STEM learning for this school district. So we're not only reliant on the school district's budgets because the school district's budgets can be very limiting and it depends on which part of the country you're in as to how much money your budget is, right? Or if you're a public school or a private school or a charter school or maybe even a micro school or even homeschool, right? That really determines maybe your budget size. And so we really try to match and partner with businesses to ensure that the businesses are donating to these school districts in order to put STEM into their communities.

Dr. Lisa Hassler: 16:53

When I was working in the school, a lot of people would donate money but didn't really know where their dollars went. And so when we got very specific and when they knew that they were donating their dollars towards that thing, it just became very real. So I think that was that's a great way that you're able to help partner and bridge them together so that everybody wins, you know.

SPEAKER_01: 17:12

Yeah, thank you. I appreciate that. And we really try to work on the volunteer piece too, because most businesses don't want to just give money. I mean, some do, some just give money to school districts and to ensure that the students in the community thrive. But we found that the the ones that really want to invest in school districts also want to be school districts' partner, right? They want to have their employees come in and help support somehow somehow, because you want to be a part of the solution and you want to be a partner with that school over time because school districts need sustainable partners, right? And I believe sustainable partners come from not just the money you give, but the time and effort that you invest into that community. And when you do that in the community, you really it's rooted at the school district level because the students are gonna be the ones that are gonna not only help the community thrive now, but into the future.

Dr. Lisa Hassler: 18:00

From your perspective, what are the promising innovations in educational technology that have the ability to transform classrooms? What do you think is exciting out there?

SPEAKER_01: 18:10

What I'm really excited about is educators leaning in to this question about how do we maybe teach differently? How do we think about students from a higher level perspective? And instead of teaching to the test, instead of just thinking about grades, instead of just thinking about how do we ensure that the students meet these criteria sets that we have on our page, what I'm excited about is that educators are thinking, wow, you know, AI is gonna do a lot of this stuff for the future generations, right? It is, it's just gonna do it. So rather than be fearful of it, let's lean into that and make sure we're teaching kids how to think, how to discern, how to really problem solve. We've got what we call, I think it's in my book here, we've got what we call these competencies that again drive STEM identity for learners, like being a very strong systems thinker, computational thinking, communicator, collaborator, having higher order thinking skills. These are the things that actually are gonna matter in this fast, rapid changing technology-driven world. And if we forget about those things, technology is going to lead us. And we want our students to lead technology. And in order to lead technology, you have to understand digital literacy. You have to really understand how to be an ethical user of technology. And that's really important. We believe that's really gonna help students acquire those skills that are going to be the key ingredient for them to be productive adults. Because what AI will not get rid of is humans. And humans need to have really strong connective tissue to each other. And we we crave relationship as humans, you know. Although I know there's lots of things out there about, you know, students having relationships with AI, they won't really have relationships with AI, right? Because in the end, we need we need each other because AI doesn't actually have a heart. It might have, you know, answers to the questions you put out there, but it doesn't have a heart and it doesn't have the ability to be nuanced in in the way that it approaches the world. So I'm excited that the conversation is happening amongst the the superintendents and the teachers and the principals and ed tech leaders to think about what kids actually need to be successful in life. And I think it's way beyond the f newfangled technology that's out there.

Dr. Lisa Hassler: 20:34

Yeah, I I would agree. Well, thank you so much for your time today. And thank you for sharing. Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_01: 20:39

I was it was a it was a pleasure meeting with you and talking with you, and I wish you all the luck.

Dr. Lisa Hassler: 20:43

I encourage you to take a moment and reflect on your own STEM learning environment. Choose one aspect, whether it's project-based learning, technology integration, or building STEM identity. What small step could you take this week to enhance STEM learning? Remember that effective STEM education is more than content. It's about nurturing curious, creative problem solvers ready for an ever-changing world. If you have a story about what's working in your schools that you'd like to share, you can email me at Lisa at drisaarhassler.com or visit my website at www.drlisaarhassler.com and send me a message. If you like this podcast, subscribe and tell a friend. The more people that know, the bigger impact it will have. And if you find value to the content in this podcast, consider becoming a supporter by clicking on the supporter link in the show notes. It is the mission of this podcast to shine light on the good in education so that it spreads, affecting positive change. So let's keep working together to find solutions that focus on our children's success.