This article describes how teachers can turn their class into a STEM exploration hub where students engage with real-life scientists, mathematicians, and engineers. Within this space, students have opportunities to connect "Next Generation Science Standards"-aligned learning targets with potential STEM career choices. Using the 7E instructional framework (Eisenkraft 2003), the authors created a lesson in which students solve a genetic coding mystery, using their puzzle skills and knowledge about patterns to decode DNA. To explore STEM and DNA career choices, students also read about and then engaged in a virtual meeting with Pardis Sabeti, a practicing computational biologist, geneticist, professor, and researcher. The authors taught this lesson to a diverse high school biology class as part of a larger unit on heredity. The lesson took three 60-minute class periods: one hour for reading and DNA activity, one hour for STEM Gems Virtual Book Club, and one hour for the Claims-Evidence-Reasoning and argumentation session.