Girls Only Club Sparks Interest in STEM
Published October 24, 2014
McKenzie Atwood and Jenna Nam have known one another since first grade at Kenrose Elementary, attend the same church and share the same passion for science, technology, engineering and math. So what did they do with this shared passion? Form a girls only, first of it’s kind at Ravenwood High School, STEM club, of course, and they are sharing this passion with young female students at Kenrose Elementary.
The club was created in the spring of 2014, after McKenzie and her dad spoke about the need for more awareness in the science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) fields.
“I walked into my computer science class last year and I was literally the only girl in the room,” McKenzie said. “And I thought, ‘This is a problem; computers are awesome; why aren’t there more girls in this class?'”
And so the club was created. Jenna and McKenzie met throughout the summer, coming up with lesson plans and what they wanted the elementary school girls and the high school girls to take away from this club.
“We researched and came up with broad themes over the summer,” Jenna said. “From there we went with broad ideas of what we needed to do and then narrowed it down to create lesson plans. It was a long process to figure out how long to make the sessions; how many sessions do we want to have, etc.; but it was definitely worth it.”
What makes this club unique is not only that it is in its first year of existence at RHS, but that the club is also collaborating with Kenrose Elementary to raise awareness for STEM with younger girls.
“Our goal is to give them more exposure to STEM fields and let them know that there are more things that you can do and lots of different options in life than maybe they think,” Jenna said. “You can cure diseases; you can build cool buildings; lots of varieties of things that you can do so hopefully that’s one of the things they take from this club.”
The first meeting with Kenrose Elementary students was Monday, October 20. Around 20 girls attended the meeting, where the focus was on light and lightwaves. The girls made bracelets with ultraviolet beads that change color in the sun. Once the girls were finished making the bracelets, they went outside to see what the light would do to the beads. Upon returning back inside, the young attendees had to explain why the beads changed color given what they had just learned.
“A lot of our lesson plans and ideas and even items we used in this lesson and will use moving forward are from our retired physics teacher Mr. King,” McKenzie said. “He had a lot of cool project ideas when we were in class, and we’ve taken those ideas and included them in our plans for this club with the elementary students. A lot of our ideas came straight from him.”
One of Jenna and McKenzie’s hopes is that this club starts to kindle a love for STEM fields in the elementary age girls.
“We want to show them that you can be girly and like being a girl and have fun and do all kinds of stuff but also be good at science or into computers,” McKenzie said. “It’s not just a boy thing; there are so many cool jobs in these fields that these girls may not have exposure to otherwise.”
“Hopefully this is an environment where they can feel comfortable to ask questions and really learn about the things we are teaching them,” Jenna said.
The high school club currently has a roster of 21 girls. Jenna and McKenzie hope that number continues to grow and flourish, even through the coming years.
“Hopefully someone will carry on this club and expand it next year,” McKenzie said. “Now that we have a precedent and the ground work, it should be easier for people to keep it going.”
Jenna agrees.
“We want it to be an outreach with other programs but we also want this club to be collaborative within the high schooler part of the club,” Jenna said. “An important thing about science is that you can’t just stay in a little scientific vacuum and speak scientific jargon and expect someone to understand it. Communicating science to an audience of your peers or even people younger than you is so important. We also hope that we can be resources for the underclassman. We’ll be off in college next year hopefully studying one of these STEM fields, and we really hope we can be resources for high schoolers looking into these fields.”
The club’s sponsor is Lauren Ramey, Director of Choirs at Ravenwood High School, and she couldn’t be more proud of two of her students.
“Jenna and McKenzie are in my choir and I used to work at Apple so I’ve seen a lot of the technology side of things,” Lauren said. “I love science; I’m all for promoting this club. All of these fields, including choir, are all connected. Music technology, music engineering – it all comes together and is incredibly important. This was a huge success today.”
Did you have a child a Kenrose who missed this STEM session but want to be involved? OR want to keep attending the STEM sessions? The schedule for STEM at Kenrose is:
Monday, October 27: Session 2 – Transportation
Monday, November 3: Session 3 – Technology
Monday, November 17: Session 4 – Environment
STEM club meets on Mondays, September – November, at 2:30 at Ravenwood High School. Any questions can be directed to Lauren Ramey at lauren.ramey@wcs.edu.