For several years now, the language of education has been saturated with acronyms, trends, and concepts that promise to help solve the problems of the 21st century. Among all this repetition, STEM is undoubtedly one of the most common. It appears in conferences, institutional documents, and social media platforms. Yet, beyond the buzzword, it raises a basic but urgent question: what does it really mean to receive a STEM education in a school? What does it look like in everyday practice? How does it feel in the classroom? And, most importantly, how is it built?
First of all, STEM is not a lab full of wires, nor does it look like a routine that is visited periodically just to “check a box.” It is not an isolated project, nor a single class that merely complements the curriculum. STEM, at its core, is a mindset and a practical method for problem-solving. It is an approach that views science, technology, engineering, and mathematics not as separate disciplines, but as parts of the same machinery—one that prepares students for a world that is moving faster than ever and constantly changing, in pace, complexity, and creative depth.
The challenge lies in translating that idea into action. The challenge lies in translating that idea into action. Traditional teaching, where students simply open the “tap” of knowledge and passively absorb it, no longer fully meets today’s needs. Children and young people need spaces where they can build, make mistakes, try again, redesign, collaborate with a team, and discover things for themselves. This is where a STEM process begins to take shape and gain meaning. This is the Engineering Design Process.
That is why it is important to talk about makerspaces and creation spaces. Not just another trend, but living spaces that can function simultaneously as a workshop, laboratory, studio, and meeting place. Spaces where students can think, design, print, program, dismantle, and rebuild. Spaces where creativity is no longer an abstract concept, but something students engage in every day. In these environments, mistakes are not punished; they are understood as part of learning.
At our school, we are cultivating this ground step by step. When we use a green screen for the school news broadcast, it is not just about recording a video. We are opening the door to audiovisual production, digital storytelling, and the development of visual thinking. In the same way, robotics classes become an opportunity for students to understand how programming, sensors, and design can come together to address real-world problems.
These STEM examples are the first strokes of a path we are building with intention and conviction. They are seeds that, with the right care, can grow into a school culture where curiosity, experimentation, and critical thinking are at the heart of learning.
Thus, the question stops being “What is STEM?” and becomes something much deeper: “What kind of school do our students need today?” And in that reflection, one certainty becomes clear: STEM is not a passing trend, but a commitment to an education that connects curiosity with purpose, knowledge with action, and school with the real world.
Because yes, we hear a lot about STEM—but here, we are beginning to build, through actions and not just words, what it truly looks like.