What is an offer?
An offer is a way of advertising your STEM outreach activity directly to teachers and community group leaders. If you have a ready-made STEM outreach activity (or an idea for one) that you would like to deliver to young people, putting it up as an offer on the STEM Ambassador platform is the best way to reach teachers.
There are approximately 3250 schools in London – many of whom are using the STEM Ambassadors Platform to find enrichment opportunities for their young people throughout the year. For teachers, it can be difficult to know what and who is available in their local area, which is where ‘offers’ comes into play. Teachers can search for offers on the platform and contact you about taking you up on your offer. This is an easy and accessible way to engage with schools, teachers, and learners on your terms.
Crucially, your offer can be targeted geographically, by age-group, subject area etc., so you remain in control of your outreach – what you do, where, when and with whom.
How do I create an offer?
Creating an offer is simple:
- Sign into your STEM Ambassador account at stem.org.uk.
- Select ‘Offers’ within the panel on the left, then ‘Add offer’.
- Fill in the details about the activity you can offer.
- Select ‘submit’ and then check your posting and select ‘publish’.
- Wait for teachers to register an interest in your offer and communicate with them to organise the activity
If you want to create an offer but you’re not sure where to start, join us for one of our ‘Find out about offers’ training sessions. In the session we discuss what types of activities you can offer, how best to describe this to educators and how to manage your offer on the STEM Ambassadors platform. A full list of dates and sign-up links can be found on the Training Hub of the STEM Ambassadors Community.
Example offers – these are a good place to get started when thinking about offers!
Primary job talk
Engineering talk for older primary school students
Hi! My name is Jess and I have been a STEM Ambassador since 2021, and I am keen to visit more schools and talk to even more students. I have written a short, 15 minute talk all about my job as an engineer for 9 – 10 year olds which is accompanied by a PowerPoint that includes lots of pictures to help the children understand what it is that I do. I talk about what I enjoyed at school (maths and science, but learning in general), what skills I use (like listening, teamwork, creativity) and some cool projects I have worked on. I am then happy to answer the young people’s questions for another 15 minutes or so, however long you think would fit into your lesson time. The whole session should last about 30 minutes but I’m happy to work with you if you want to tweak it a bit. I can do this talk virtually, or at any school in South West London. Please give me around 2 months’ notice so that I can organise flexible working time with my employer. Looking forward to hearing from you.
Primary curriculum-linked activity
How electricity is used in the world – session for primary schools
I’m an electrician based in central London. If you’re currently teaching your students about electricity, I would love to chat to them about my job and how I use what they’re learning in my every day. I’ve had a look at the curriculum and can mention circuits, how I stay safe when working with electricity, and what I do in my job so they can find out what careers link to their topic. I have found an activity on the Explorify website that I would be keen to deliver which should take about 30 minutes to deliver in total, including plenty of time for questions. Let me know if you want to work together to make this happen for your class!
Office visit
Invitation for sixth form students to visit a lab
My company, ScienceUK are looking for 16-18 year olds who have an interest in a career in science, particularly biotechnology and vaccine development. We are doing an open day at one of our labs in East London on 10th May and would like to introduce keen students to what we do. We will do a tour of the lab, have a group of our scientists and lab technicians meet the students, and then do a number of activities in the afternoon. Due to space and safety constraints, we can only have 20 students visit, so we are looking for two teachers to nominate 10 students from their class to attend the day (of course accompanied by a teacher). Please message if your school is interested in taking part in the day and we can work out the specifics.
