MOBILE, Ala. — The University of Mobile hosted its Teacher Education Council Annual Meeting on Thursday, Sept. 17, from 10 a.m. to noon in Ram Hall, featuring the work of 18 K-5 teacher leaders from across Workforce Region 7 who completed a months-long professional learning program called STEM Catalyst.
Seven Systems and a University
The teachers represent Mobile County Public Schools, Baldwin County Public Schools, Chickasaw City School, Choctaw County Schools, Escambia County Public Schools, Gulf Shores City Schools, Wilcox County Public Schools and the University of Mobile.
That roster spans a wide range of district circumstances — Alabama’s largest school system alongside single-school city districts and rural county systems. Programs that draw participants across that spread put teachers in a cohort with colleagues whose working conditions differ substantially from their own, which is where much of the peer learning actually happens.
The Meeting
The STEM Catalyst initiative was presented in conjunction with the university’s annual Teacher Education Council meeting, where community and district leaders discuss goals, review data and consider outcomes from their own initiatives toward teacher preparation.
The Sept. 17 meeting brought together teachers, school and district leaders, and community partners to hear directly from the University of Mobile School of Education and the STEM Catalyst cohort about their experience in the program and its impact in their classrooms.
How the Program Worked
The Modiv EDU STEM Catalyst initiative is funded through a grant from Workforce Alabama and the Alabama STEM Council.
The program supported K-5 educators as they worked through Workforce-Ready courses on the Modiv EDU learning platform, building skills to better prepare students for future career pathways in STEM fields.
Through micro-courses, the teachers focused on identifying future-ready skills for classroom instruction, then designed and implemented a learning experience for their K-5 students. They earned micro-credentials and professional development credit hours aligned to state, national and international standards, demonstrating their impact on student learning.
The design-and-implement requirement is what distinguishes this from conventional professional development. A teacher completing a workshop returns to a classroom and may or may not apply anything. A teacher required to build a lesson, teach it and document what students did has already made the transfer before the program ends.
Why Micro-Credentials
“The STEM Catalyst initiative is built on what we know works for teacher learning and, in turn, student learning. By earning micro-credentials alongside designing and implementing future-focused lessons, teachers gain lasting, evidence-based capacity to innovate in their classrooms,” said Beth Sanders, Modiv EDU co-founder.
Micro-credentials differ from traditional professional development hours in that they are competency-based — awarded on demonstrated evidence of a skill rather than on seat time. A teacher submits artifacts showing the practice in use, and the credential attests to something specific rather than to attendance.
Why K-5
Targeting elementary rather than secondary teachers is a deliberate choice in STEM workforce programming.
Student attitudes toward mathematics and science form early, and research consistently finds that interest and self-concept in those subjects begin diverging well before middle school. An elementary teacher who is confident with STEM content and who presents it as accessible influences a full class of students each year — and elementary teachers, who teach all subjects, frequently receive the least subject-specific STEM preparation of any group of educators.
Workforce Region 7
Workforce Region 7 covers southwest Alabama, an area whose employers include aerospace, shipbuilding, chemical processing, steel and metals, maritime and port operations — all of which draw on technical skills.
Connecting K-5 classroom instruction to that regional employment picture is the stated logic of the grant funding from Workforce Alabama and the Alabama STEM Council.