Since the moment the Academy signed a partnership agreement with the Girl Scouts, I knew I would be spending a lot of time with the adults who run their wonderful programs. Somewhat densely though, I hadn’t thought about all of the time I was going to spend with the girls themselves so I was pleasantly surprised to be staring out at about a dozen of them from the stage in our auditorium.
On Valentine’s Day, the Girl Scouts hosted a Girls Love STEM event to release the findings from a recent study called “Generation STEM“. The study, which is rigorous, well written, and easily applicable to program design and construction, painted a picture of how girls succeed in STEM instead of the usual focus on barriers to success. For me, the study reaffirmed the design elements of our afterschool program and heighted my excitement to work with a group dedicated to hands on learning, leadership, and self-directed exploration of topics.
I was lucky enough to serve as a discussant on the event’s panel on the findings. I love to be on panels, especially with when they have such great discussants, but I rarely find myself addressing such a wonderfully diverse group of stakeholders – parents, press, teachers, scientists, etc – assembled in our auditorium. But lining the front row and in fact on the panel with me, were wall-to-wall girl scouts, cameras and tape recorders aimed right at the panelists ready to capture our advice and wisdom.
Yikes! I prepared a fairly academic set of talking points about research findings not advice or wisdom easily communicated to girls ages 7-18! And each and every one of them were filming me with their call phones!
After a few seconds of panic and paying careful attention to the opening remarks of Anna Marie Chavez, the new President of the Girl Scouts, I realized that I needed to simply shift my talking points to address the girls as I do any young person (aka anyone younger then me) who is interested in science outreach.
You see, these girls were already doing pretty impressive STEM activities – their robotics teams were cleaning up the regional competitions and they were all covered in badges proving their interest and success in STEM. I didn’t need to tell them why they loved STEM, I needed to give them advice on how they could help others love STEM – I needed to give them some basics of how to mentor.
Here are some of my points to them:
- It’s everyone’s responsibility to mentor no matter how young you are. From the moment you’re born, there is someone younger than you and it’s key for girls and women at all ages to share how their wisdom with the younger set – even if you’re 7 you can help the 6 year olds!
- If you get stuck, and you’ll get stuck, your friends are your best source of advice and can offer shelter from the storm. Use them and have friends who love you for who you are.
- Follow your passion and understand that you will sometimes have to do things you feel are boring or worthless. Some of those things are boring and worthless but most of them will have some value in the long run.
- Take as much math as possible! I had no idea that my poor math skills would consistently hold me back and keep me from loving chemistry and physics. Not only did I struggle in those classes, I avoided them and my transcript reveals both a lack of interest and a poor grasp of the basics.
There were teachers in the audience as well and I was asked to provide thoughts on how they can help support girls. As a teacher, I don’t necessarily think about specific strategies to support boys or girls. My research revealed that quiet students are at a great disadvantage in terms of access to participation in class which can lead to teachers overlooking them as good in science. In other words, many teaching practices expect kids to talk up, raise their hand, and answer questions at loud. To most kids, the fear of getting the wrong answer is enough to keep them from participating but quiet kids can be completely shut out without specific strategies to solicit info from them in ways in which they are comfortable.
Therefor my comments to teachers were much more general: create learning environments where kids can fail with grace. The best example I could give was to reference how well designed video games constantly challenge kids to push their own achievement with minimal consequences for failure. Though many adults are skeptical of games, we could all learn something about the value of individualized opportunities to “level up” in science and math classes.
For me the greatest part of the discussion and the event, was meeting all of the Girl Scouts. Erin, a high school cheerleader and programmer for her robotics team challenged my perception of the role of “girlyness” in STEM. Unlike myself, Erin was wearing makeup, had styled her hair, and had on great shoes. She was also obviously brilliant, hard working, and cared a great deal about her teammates who were sitting in the front row- She had the poise and grace of a princess and the brains and outspokenness of our most brilliant thinkers.
