STEM education and opportunities are not accessible to all students. Talent is equally distributed, but opportunity is not. Whether we like it or not, STEM is a hierarchy. It has a language, system of governance, and social norms. When students in my class were asked to describe what a scientist looked like, many of them said, tall, white lab coat, a man in goggles, beakers, and test tubes. I continued to ask them to name any scientist that comes to their mind. Many said Albert Einstein, Stephen Hawking, or Elon Musk. However, not one student from any of my four sections mentioned Rosalind Franklin, Katherine Johnson, Mae C. Jemison, or even George Washington Carver. At that moment, three things were made apparent to me. One, many of them remained oblivious to the fact that being a scientist doesn't come with a list of appearance requirements; two, that they didn't have role models to look up to in the science community; and three, meeting their diverse holistic needs always to be my top priority.

When it comes to STEM education, students from underserved schools are not given the same opportunity to flourish, especially in the sciences. The arts and sciences are riddled with epistemic injustice. Epistemic injustices are the purposeful discreditation of a person or groups' knowledge and capabilities (Stroupe, 2019). This injustice trickles into the classroom even when teachers actively try to break racial, cultural, and ethnic boundaries. In education, the teacher is often seen as the sage of information. Teachers are often seen or misinterpreted as the source of all content, skills, and learning; however, this is not true. Diversity in age, knowledge, and background has been scientifically proven through evidence-based research to deliver better learning outcomes and inspire creative solutions for complex challenges. Teaching is an occupation where both parties, teachers, and students are continuously and simultaneously learning through one another. Nonetheless, by solely conducting and following the philosophy that a teacher-centered classroom is the best teaching method, whether implicitly or consciously, is actively perpetuating the divide between students who see themselves in STEM and students who don't believe STEM spaces them (Stroupe, 2019). These dividers can vividly be seen across all identities, male, female, white, black, Hispanic, Latinx, queer, straight, and various socioeconomic status in between.

Teaching is a learned profession. No one is born a great teacher. Natural-born teachers do not exist; however, the passion and drive still need to be there, as it does for all careers in any field (Stroupe, 2019). Teaching is an art by nature supported by evidence-based research and practice. As previously stated, teaching is a career that requires ongoing learning. That learning requires becoming more aware of ourselves, our students, and the societal context we all live in. Educators are biased. We all have implicant biases. Implicit biases are biases that are latently learned through our upbringing based on our cultural and societal surroundings, independent experiences, and group experiences. It is also important to note that these biases be generationally passed down via storytelling. Humans learn not only through direct experiences but also from second-hand situational accounts. Implicit biases are autonomic and engraved in our deep consciousness. As educators, many of us are diversity, equity, and inclusion workshops to increase our cultural and moral awareness; however, we are still by-products of our environment. Attending workshops and seminars is not enough. Whenever we step into the classroom, we need to be actively engaged within our lesson and students and with our language in actions.

Teachers are not the center of knowledge, but we do set the stage. We all need to be comfortable with acknowledging that we all have biases and so do our classrooms. As educators, we have biases that we assign to our students. This may be hard to believe, but it is true. Acknowledging our faults is the first step towards self-awareness and making ourselves mentally, cognitively, and emotionally available to meet our students' diverse needs. When we step into the classroom, we assign biases to our students, resulting in intellectual marginalization embedded in gender, race, ethnicity, and sexual identity. As Teachers, we come into the classroom with our own set of cultural stereotypes. These stereotypes incite a cycle. A cycle that initiates biases leads to micro-messages, accumulations of advantages and disadvantages, student self-efficacy, and behaviors that perpetuate teacher affirmations of cultural stereotypes and latently learned prejudice and stereotypes among students. These biases and stereotypes then become entrenched into our student's self-narrative. Then these false narratives become intertwined with their identities, self-perceptions, and presumed capabilities (Morrell & Parker, 2013)Thus, ultimately resulting in many minoritized students believing that they and STEM are incompatible. Despite the discontinuous in-person learning occurring in the years 2020 and 2021 due to the COVID-19 Pandemic, this cycle still thrives in virtual learning environments through student to student, teacher to teacher, and student to teacher social interactions.

All hope is not lost; change is possible. The role of a teacher may not be generally valued or respected in the United States, despite the six years of college education and professional training. Still, teachers are a crucial piece in inspiring change and molding the future minds of tomorrow. There is no other occupation that can say the same. To instill change and meet the diverse needs of our students, we need to become more aware of the world and our faults. The infamous cycle described above can be changed and used for the better. It can be used to our advantage. A teacher's role is to guide learning. We can change the cycle by creating a more supportive learning environment, delivering micro-messages that encourage growth mindsets and self-efficacy, and exposing students' divergent members of the scientific community (Stroupe, 2019).

Meeting the needs of diverse learning is not clean-cut or linear. Yes, varied instruction, practice, and exercises are essential. Yes, providing scaffolding, structure, and support is vital. However, these are not panaceas to meeting the diverse needs of students. They do not sit within the core of learning. The center of learning is located within those who participate in it.

This ideology came to me after my fourth week on student teaching. I was exhausted, tired, and frustrated in myself. I worked relentlessly to create engaging activities, set high expectations, embedded social-emotional learning into my lesson plans, and invested all I had into my students. They delivered on every aspect during class. Classroom engagement increased, overall assignment submission increased, social interaction increased, student implementation of feedback increased. I felt like the happiest and luckiest (student) teacher on the planet,

considering what I observed from other teachers that week and considering that virtual learning during a global pandemic is awful for all, especially the students. When the time came to view how students did on the weekly open response assessment assignment, I was shocked. Nearly have the students never submitted, submitted severely late, forgiveness unaccepted answers such as I don't understand, or I don't know. This turned me for a loop because this was not the behavior I received all week and the week prior. I could not correlate the two behaviors together because work before the assessment was all passed on and correct, and students were acing my informal assessments during class time.

Throughout my student teaching, I would weave the following messaged into my lesson or the feedback I gave. I would reiterate that I see them as a person first and a student second, I saw them as future leaders and advocate for change, and I assured them that our classroom was theirs first and mine second. However, I am not perfect and realize that no teacher can be excellent.

I learned a hard lesson that week from my students. Not all diverse needs are connected to the classroom. I know my students learned. I have the evidence to validate, but when it was time to play ball, they didn't want to bat. I realized that I could incorporate all the evidence-based research methods into my lesson as I please. I can include as much varied practice as I want, and I can incorporate any policies I think are needed. Still, my students' lives are much more significant than school, especially now more than ever. This was a hard pill for me to swallow, and I can imagine it is hard for many others to swallow as well.

A wise educator once told me that sometimes the best thing we can do as an educator is to make sure our students are safe, warm, and fed. This was a perspective I never heard or thought of. This was a need I was not familiar with but now understand. I know that my students are safe during my class, even though some are unavailable to do the work I assign outside of class. I know that they are learning even though some are unavailable to do the work I assign outside of class. I know that during my class, my students engaged even though some are unavailable to do the work I assign outside of class.

Meeting the diverse needs of students is not clean-cut or linear. Yes, varied instruction, scaffolding, and structure are essential for learning; however, these are not solutions. The center of learning and meeting diverse needs is located within those who participate in the process.