STEMpire Central

Alison Earnhart is Unapologetically Enthusiastic

Who i am

Hi! I'm Alison. I'm an educator, musician, Buddhist, maker, and a rebel.
The real-life love child of Miss Frizzle and Buckaroo Banzai, I’ve spent my life being unapologetically enthusiastic about STEAM education, music, and making the world a better place.
Photo © Exploratorium, www.exploratorium.edu

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What I do

I’ve spent my whole career teaching engineering and science. It’s what I live for! I’ve done everything from high school astronomy to undergraduate physics to elementary school robotics camps to freelance curriculum development for LEGO Education.
Currently I work at the Acera School, the Massachusetts School of Science, Creativity, and Leadership. I am a Science Specialist and their MakerSpace Maven, managing the tools and materials in our famous “Innovation Lab”.

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This video captures a course I taught in Spring 2024, combining makerspace skills with project management practice to produce a fantastic experience for my engineering students at Acera!

Here’s a short video about a robotics project I worked on in collaboration with the Little Singer Community School in the Navajo Nation. Check out my blog for more info and a longer video! December 2021

“Everybody is a genius, but if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it’s stupid.”

- Often mistakenly attributed to Albert Einstein, but true either way.

This video from 2012 was a collaboration between my filmmaker brother and me. We hope you enjoy this joint effort to showcase our passions!

My philosophy

My teaching philosophy is perfectly summarized by that quote above. Everybody can learn, and everybody has superpowers. The role of the educator is to encourage students to explore their own talents and learn how to utilize their unique skills and interests such that they can successfully contribute to society and find their own satisfaction in life.

I love inspiring students -- whether they go on to become rocket scientists (some of them have!) or they simply develop a useful toolkit of critical thinking skills and a lifelong appreciation for the STEM subjects. Teaching science and engineering is, in effect, teaching critical thinking and practical problem solving. And those are skills that serve people throughout their lives no matter where they go or what they do.