Little Minds: Summer STEAM Mentor
Kids. So pure, innocent, naive, inquisitive, carefree, enthusiastic, goofy, energetic, and unfazed. Children live in sweet oblivion, without the worry-some burden of GPA or taxes. They see a world where everything is up for exploration, where there are millions of questions that have to be answered. They don’t care about people’s judgement, don’t overthink each sentence they say, and don’t ever lose curiosity about what surrounds them. We can learn a lot from kids.
The structure of one’s childhood is pivotal. The values, family dynamic, rules, exposure, and experiences that make up a childhood all play an equal part. Some people are brought up in very strict households that are multicultural, whereas others can be more loose and traditional. No matter what makes up a childhood, it is imperative to focus on nurturing these couple of traits:
- Curiosity → Don’t be afraid of asking too many questions or if they “right” ones
- Enthusiasm → Be excited about the neverending learning opportunities
- Bravery → Come on, take the plunge! Try something new, (appropriate), and scary.
- Embracing Failure → You will fail, and this is normal. Don’t worry.
- Resilience → Take a deep breath, realign, and think about how to do this a different way.
These may sound cliché and vague, but as we get older we start to lose them all. As I mentioned above, children embody all of these without even knowing it:
They wonder what will happen if they splash in the puddle, they get excited by the thought, don’t think twice and… JUMP IN! They get water all over, and now their socks are soggy. But after shaking it off, they want to feel the thrill all over again… and that, they do!
But us teenagers, and later on, adults look around for people we know and calculate the repercussions before we let our childish instinct control us. That can be good for some things, like stopping us from speeding down a highway. But for most things, overthinking holds us back. It prevents us from breaking the norm, trying more than once, and learning so much more than we thought we could.
The truth is that, doing what we want isn’t as easy as it was when we were five.
We’re made fun of and ganged up against. We’re singled out and left with few friends. We’re often alone during our failures, and have a small support network when we’re deciding what to do next.
However, what happens when it works? When we strike out? When we hit the jackpot? Then people come flocking from left, right, and center to see what you’re about. They pretend like they’ve been there all along, right by your side like the best friend you wished you had when the first prototype didn’t work. This is what we hear about and see in the news. The popularity, fame, wealth, and success that is just the tip of the ice berg; the hard times remain submerged under water where no one can see.
If we teach our children to have curiosity, enthusiasm, bravery, and resilience, we are equipping them for their very own iceberg.
If they hold tight to these traits, they will give themselves the opportunity to try ideas that may not work. They will enable themselves to rebuild better than ever after something doesn’t work out. And they will allow themselves to embrace failure as a part of life that helps them flourish.
For these reasons, I strongly believe in early exposure to the STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Math) field, especially for young girls. If it were not for my uncle who showed me how to change the color of my text and the background image on a local website I coded in HTML and CSS, I may have not ever heard of coding. I also may not have become an advocate for getting more girls involved in STEAM.
It was the ‘Aha’ moment that brought both me and my uncle so much joy. The type of joy that only comes from learning something new and getting something to finally work. This is the same enthusiasm and satisfaction that I saw in the kids that I mentored over summer at scienceSeed’s summer camp, and it is the trick to help close the gender gap in STEAM. A huge smile washed over their faces as their creation came to life, and that moment was priceless. It made all of the different explanations, debugging, confusion, and failure worth it for all of us.
Getting our girls interested in STEAM early is more important than ever in 2019.
According to Girls Who Code, a national organization teaching girls how to code, 66% of 6–12 year old girls are enrolled in computing programs. However, this number dwindles to 32% for 13–17 year olds, and worse, 4% for female college freshmen. This is why only 18% of Computer Science (CS) bachelor’s degrees are earned by women (CS.org).
The pattern can be seen clearly: As girls grow up, they get increasingly less interested in STEAM.
This statement does not however take into consideration the stigmas and barriers that make this true. Not only is it socially “weird” for young girls to be in STEAM, but it is usually a boys-club that makes it more uncomfertable to try. Pair that with the wavering confidence of an adolescent girl, and there will be very few middle-schoolers trying out the coding club at their school, no matter how smart she is.
Nevertheless, if we break the stigma early girls won’t be as fazed by these things. STEAM will simply be something that she is interested in and can explore further, just like theater or soccer. Now, with the help of their programs, Girls Who Code alumni are choosing to major in CS at 15 times the national average!
Working with your kids on hands-on projects, such as building, coding, 3-D printing, designing, and experimenting are all great ways to nurture the five key character-building traits. Whether it’s mixing vinegar and baking soda or programming a First-Lego-League robot, it may not work the first time… or the second, or the third… but maybe it will on the fourth try. Situations like these provide an ample opportunity to practice problem solving and patience for both you and your child. And for our young girls, it “helps your future self-rescuing princess get started down the right path” (Wired.com)
To find fun STEAM activities you can check out these great websites:
Programming: Scratch, Code.org, Codecademy, Khan Academy, CS Unplugged
Robotics: Lego Mindstorms , littleBits, GoldieBlox
Graphic Design: Canva
