Joshua Sneideman 
Dear Fellow Educators – STEM is not an acronym! For far too long, people have talked about STEM education as “S period T period E period M period,” standing for science, technology, engineering and mathematics. When I ask a student what STEM means, I certainly don’t want to hear that it means science, technology, engineering and mathematics. As more and more schools are developing their STEM programs, too many of them still rely on this simple viewpoint.
I would rather hear students and teachers say that STEM is a way of looking at the interconnectedness of the world and realizing that all academic skills come together into a beautiful harmony of understanding designed to help me become a better problem solver. STEM is a way of recognizing the interconnectedness of life spans across disciplinary silos. STEM is about future opportunity. STEM is about high demand, high wage jobs. Most importantly, STEM is about providing students authentic, real-world problem-solving opportunities. It is an opportunity to engage with the world around us and develop a clear understanding of one’s own ability to have a positive impact. As many are aware and have argued vociferously for over a decade, art is part of STEM. Music, too, is critical to the STEM experience. But English class is also part of a quality STEM education.
Consider the play “Hamilton” by Lin Manuel Miranda. Is Hamilton STEM? The set was engineered. The rhymes were carefully constructed over years of laborious effort and RESEARCH, presumably with the aid of technology, searching databases to learn more about the life of Hamilton and his crew. The lighting, the choreography, the sound technology, the Disney movie, the editing, the marketing … the list goes on. Of course, Hamilton is STEM.
Thinking of STEM as S.T.E.M is entirely too narrow a view. It is like describing an apple as simply fruit. An apple is a thing of beauty, a miracle of nature, and apples are as diverse as snowflakes. The apple genome has approximately 57,000 genes, more than the human genome, which has about 25,000 genes. The apple is clearly more than a fruit. For some farmers, it is financial livelihood. For some parents, it is a way to keep the doctor away. For some children, it is a way to help loosen a tooth. No, an apple is not just a fruit, and STEM is not just S.T.E.M. STEM is so much more. This is why the Department of Defense just awarded $31,000,000 to “establish or expand STEM education, outreach, and workforce initiatives for students and educators from early childhood through postsecondary.” Did you catch that? The DoD thinks STEM starts in early childhood! For more info on STEM in early childhood, read my featured article in Natural Start.
Therefore, best practices in STEM involve helping students make connections between the real world they are living in and the impact they have on that world. They have opportunities to look at the world around them, investigate the phenomenon surrounding us all, and provide solutions through daily problem-solving. It is certainly and most emphatically about empowering students to see themselves as change-makers with the skills and abilities to impact society in positive ways through the 6 Cs of STEM: communication, collaboration, creativity, critical thinking, citizenship and computational thinking.
STEM is beautiful when done well. It is also sloppy. I like to think of STEM education as controlled chaos because great STEM education lets the students lead, requiring letting go of the controlled teacher-centered model. This is why STEM education is hard to deliver well and why it is more than an acronym. It requires a unique approach. You have to give teachers a little bit of room to try new things, think out of the box and open their classroom to authentic STEM engagement.
Further Reading
- Yale Climate Connections – Nine climate change books for educators
- CBS News – Think big, start early: New effort to close gender gap in science starts in preschool
- The EdTech Roundup – edCircuit: 6 Inspiring Ways To Continue STEM Education During the Pandemic
What does STEM stand for? An edCircuit guide
Added by edCircuit in October 2026 to accompany Joshua Sneideman’s article above.
STEM stands for science, technology, engineering and mathematics. In federal law, the America COMPETES Act of 2010 defines STEM as “the academic and professional disciplines of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics,” as the Congressional Research Service explains. Some agencies use a broader definition: the National Science Foundation also includes psychology and the social sciences. Sneideman’s point above is that good STEM education is about connecting these subjects to solve real problems, not treating them as four separate letters.
Where the term came from
The acronym is often credited to Judith Ramaley, who led the National Science Foundation’s education division in the early 2000s; her colleagues had been using “SMET,” and she preferred a different order. Education Week found that educators had linked the four subjects long before then, and that the first clear use of “STEM” it could document was a congressional STEM caucus formed in 2005.
STEM and STEAM
STEAM adds the arts, reflecting the creative design and communication that Sneideman describes in examples like Hamilton. The Rhode Island School of Design adopted STEAM as part of its mission in 2011 and helped launch a Congressional STEAM Caucus, according to the National Society of Professional Engineers.
STEM careers by the numbers
| STEM occupations | All occupations | |
|---|---|---|
| Jobs in 2025 | 10.9 million | — |
| Median annual wage, 2025 | $106,360 | $50,980 |
| Projected growth, 2025–35 | 7.4% | 3.5% |
Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, updated August 2026. Using a broader definition, the National Science Board counts about 36 million people, roughly a quarter of the U.S. workforce, in STEM jobs in 2023.
Frequently asked questions
What does STEM stand for in school? Science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Many schools teach it through projects that connect the four subjects, the approach Sneideman argues for.
What is the difference between STEM and STEAM? STEAM adds the arts to science, technology, engineering and math.
Do STEM jobs pay more? On average, yes. The median STEM wage in 2025 was more than twice the median for all occupations, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
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