STEM Professionals in Your Neighbourhood

This story describes a young student, home from school for the day, running errands with their father. Along their journey, the student will observe many STEM professionals at work. STEM professionals are people who have jobs in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Students will learn that they can meet STEM professionals in their own neighbourhood.

Read the following story to your students. Discuss with them which of the characters they meet in the story are STEM professionals. Ask them if they are know of any STEM professionals in their own neighbourhood. Ask them: what do STEM professionals do? After the discussion, students can choose one STEM professional, and draw a picture of them to illustrate the story.

Running Errands

Your alarm goes off. You look over at the clock to see what the time is. It’s still dark outside! It’s cold, too. “Ahhh-choo!” you sneeze. Your dad appears at the door. “Are you okay?” he asks.

Actually, no, you don’t think so. Your nose tickles, your throat burns, your face feels flushed, and you notice that you’re breathing through your mouth.

“Sorry, kiddo, but I don’t think you’re going to school today. I think you might be contagious, and it’s better you don’t spread it around your class. I’ll call work.” Your dad disappears.

An hour later, your mum and your siblings have headed out to work and to school, and your dad comes to the door. “Come on, kiddo, we need to run some errands. The fresh air might do you good.” Together, the two of you drive to the local shops.

First, you stop at the pharmacy. “We need some medicine,” Dad tells the pharmacist.

“Sure! What are the symptoms?” the pharmacist asks. You and your dad tell the pharmacist. She asks for your age and weight, so that she can choose the right medicine. Then, she asks your dad to choose between two brands of the medicine. Your dad chooses one, pays, and then the pharmacist gives you some water so that you can the medicine straight away. “Wait four hours before your next dose, buddy,” the pharmacist advises.

You walk past the vet’s surgery. Through the window, you can see a dog with a bandage. A man in a strange green outfit is kneeling in front of it, patting it, and speaking to it. He takes out a stethoscope and listens to its heart.

You and your dad turn a corner, and cross a little bridge over a creek. At the other end of the bridge, a woman wearing orange is standing in front of a strange piece of equipment. “Careful!” she calls, when you get closer. “I’ve got this levelling instrument all set up and ready.”

“What’s she doing, Dad?” You ask. “She’s a surveyor,” your dad replies. “She’s finding the precise location of particular points on the ground, so that she can find the distance and angles between them.” Fascinating! You watch her for a little while, as she looks through a scope and adjusts the equipment slightly.

The two of you walk past some shops. The first has “IT REPAIR” across the top of a large plate glass window. Your dad says. “I.T. stands for ‘information technologies,’ and they mean computers and other devices.” You peer into the window. Inside is a workshop, with tools on the walls, and computer pieces spread out on a bench. A woman is seated at the bench, wearing funny looking gloves and a strange pair of glasses. She’s concentrating hard, examining a small flat thing in her hands.
The next shop advertises a nutritionist. Posters on the wall show pictures of different foods. A sign on the door advertises weekly cooking classes for people with diabetes at this time. Several people are sitting around a table, which has different foods in the centre of it.

Finally, you have arrived at the grocery store. Dad picks up some chicken and vegetables, pays for them, and you return to the car.
“Just one last stop,” your dad says, pulling into the petrol station. In a garage beside the petrol station, three mechanics are working to fix an old car. You watch them while you wait to fill up the car with petrol. A sign warns you not to light a flame or use a phone while doing so. Your dad holds the pump to the car, and you watch the meter tick over the volume of petrol added to the car’s tank.

Finally, you’re home, and your dad prepares a soup. “This will make you feel better,” he says. The soup fills you with warmth.

“Dad,” you ask, suddenly, “what do you do?”

“You mean, at work?” he replies, closing the dishwasher and pressing a button to start the dishwasher program.

“Yeah…”

“I work in an office with a computer,” he says. “I pull together information about the weather from all over Australia, and use special software, called data modelling software, to make weather predictions.”

Dad sends you back to bed, where you sleep away the afternoon.

Years P–2
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