Last weekend, I attended a Black Girls Code event in Brooklyn, NY. I can’t express how amazed I was at the talent, endurance, creativity, and excitement that I saw in just the last few hours of a full weekend-packed, girls-only coding event. I just realized how cool it was to say that — “weekend-packed, girls-only coding event” — awesome. Anyways, all the way from age 10 up to 18, girls presented ideas for apps that they had created over just a few hours together in teams throughout the weekend.

All of the teams’ ideas centered around the theme “Respect is Love” relating them to friendships, bullying, healthy relationships with boyfriends/girlfriends and parents, and even an app that could detect the mood of a text you send to someone! I know I could definitely use something like that in my life! It was an incredible feeling watching these small girls fill the room with their giant personalities, pitching apps to a widely known (and I’d guess, pretty intimidating) panel of judges.

I kept thinking to myself, why aren’t my students participating in more stuff like this??? I learned about the event a few weeks prior and after having been involved in the Technovation Challenge program (with several of my students) in previous years, I thought for sure I could gather up a few students to partake in this amazing event. No dice.

I sent a whole school email to all the parents and students about the event, sharing that I would gladly assist in whatever ways they needed and just to reach out for help if necessary. No response. I specifically cornered a few of my students who I thought would be a good fit. “I’m busy that weekend.” “I don’t really feel like going.” “No, that’s not something I’m interested in doing.” These were some of the responses I got.

There are myriad teams of professionals, educators, and corporations all over the world working on getting more females (and minorities) involved in STEM fields (specifically technology). Programs that I would love to have been involved in when I was a kid. For some reason, however, I feel as though the students whom we want most to get involved in these fields are the ones most resistant. Why is this?

Why is it that when I ask all the girls in our school’s population (roughly 95% minorities) to participate in technology-related events or programs that are directed towards them specifically, they resist so much? Is it that they have no connection to technology? That can’t be true. I see them on their phones, computers, tablets all the time. Is it that their parents don’t push them to participate in extracurricular programs? They show up for tutoring and other clubs after school, so that can’t be it. Maybe it’s that they have no real connection to the field, never having met or even seen anyone who looks like them in technology. Right off the bat, they assume it’s something that isn’t right for them. So who’s going to convince them that it is?

Think about it. All of these programs. How do they get kids to participate? They send emails or put up digital flyers (or even actual flyers/mailings) to schools, affiliates, and parents of organizations. And what is even on these flyers? The basics (who, where, why, etc) and then a brief description of the program (probably in vocabulary that a lot of students won’t understand). This then relies on some “middle man” to entice the students into participating and “interpret” the flyer.

Having been a teacher for 10 years, I can tell you, I hear about opportunities for my students weekly, if not daily. I relay as much as I can via email (then follow-up with certain students later on), but there is a limit to how much one teacher can do. Unfortunately, I believe that many of the urban minority students rely on their teachers for motivation to participate in extracurricular (outside-of-school-comfort-zone) types of activities. The parents generally don’t have the time to research all the different opportunities, nor the wherewithal to understand which one would be better for their child.

When I did Technovation Challenge with my students, it was like pulling teeth. We had to entice them to join the team with a field trip to Google (fortunately one of the mentors was extremely nice enough to allow this) and other perks to get them all on board. Once the perks were over and the real work started however, several of them dropped out. They never were able to really see themselves as coders, or programmers, or designers.

I wonder if these students just needed to have more face time actually SEEING a minority female in a technology related job. Understanding what she does day to day. And not just anybody. Somebody REALLY COOL. Because it’s cool to be smart. Most of them don’t know that yet.