Recruiting Girls Practitioners’ Perspectives
Welcome – we’re glad you could join us today Let’s begin by finding out about your students... Poll #1 What level of students are you most involved with? a. Elementary School b. Middle School c. High School d. College and Adult/Continuing Education e. Combination of student populations/Grant Project
What types of challenges do we share? Poll #2 In which areas are your challenges for girls in STEM programs mainly found? a. Recruitment b. Retention c. Subject offerings in your school d. Support from school for special STEM programs or projects e. Finding Resources and Time
“It’s Common knowledge That…” Women are underrepresented in STEM careers Girls are typically underrepresented in STEM/technology type elective coursework and co-ed extracurricular technology oriented camps, clubs, etc. All schools may not even offer “STEM - centric” curriculum options and if they do… School curriculum is centered around science and math rather than technology and engineering Did you know? Women fill over half of all jobs in the U.S. economy, but have less than 25 percent of STEM jobs.
Successful “FIX IT Strategies” to engage girls currently focus on: Female mentoring and role models Special events targeted toward recruiting girls such as lunch with mentors, female speakers, and “all girl” clubs and camps Starting earlier with STEM programs in school
Successful “FIX IT Strategies” to engage girls currently focus on: Posters, DVDs, websites and scholarships designed “just for girls” Effective outreach programs which provide girls with opportunities to learn about high tech careers, visit high tech facilities, and a strong online presence
Strategies such as mentoring and role models are solid, and gains are being made, but so far it just hasn’t been enough to equalize numbers of girls and boys engaged in STEM curriculum and embarking on STEM careers.
Male/female equality in STEM college and career pathways, especially in the technology and engineering (T & E) side of sTEm, is not growing fast enough to support the needs of a highly technical workforce.
In this webinar, we are going to hear from STEM education practitioners from elementary to college level, examining some new, successful ideas that are in practice for engaging girls in sTEm. Let’s meet our practitioners and hear about their programs …
Recruiting girls for STEM programs: Hillsborough County Public Schools Christine Angel Danger, M. Ed. K-12 STEM Curriculum and Instruction Coordinator of Math/Science Partnership MSP Promotes STEM education and gets math and science teachers working together to show students the connections between STEM and careers christine.danger@sdhc.k12.fl.us
Problem: Our middle school girls were struggling in math but they were not coming to free on-campus tutoring. The tutorials were full of boys. H.O.T. Girls Math Solution: We addressed it as a social issue and started a club for girls only. We call the club “ Higher Order Thinking (HOT) Girls Math ” club.
We hypothesized that the cause of our girls math skills slipping and the girls not being interested in tutorials to improve was caused by mainly social reasons. (Girls will attend language arts tutoring.) The girls only club meets during lunch one day a week. The girls started by reading and discussing the book “Math Doesn’t Suck” by Danika McKellar. Now girls meet to share their struggles and victories in math and to help each other to learn math. H.O.T. Girls Math!
H.O.T. Girls Math August 2014 – 1 or 2 girls would attend each math tutorial session. (Some days no girls were present) March 2015 – 28 girls are regularly attending girls only math “club” and tutorials.
Hillsborough County uses an adopted version of several models
Breaking down the STEM CCSS model… • Problem/Challenge: Task/mission is given, helps engage students. This is an opportune place to link studies to the real world. • Studies show that girls are especially interested in helping professions – this is a perfect time to allow them to voice that interest. Robin Murphy: Roboticist to the Rescue Her intelligent robots help search for victims of disaster http://spectrum.ieee.org/robotics/artificial-intelligence/robin-murphy-roboticist-to-the-rescue
• Brainstorm/Investigate: Provide explicit time and space for students to think. We want students to contemplate a situation and be creative thinkers, not “guessers”— very important step! They need to think about more than one possible solution; what if plan A doesn’t work? They need to brainstorm a plan B, C, D…
Plan/Design: Time to draft a blueprint, students pick one design to try. Build/Test: Hands-on building and testing (multiple trials). Students need to take good notes, then have time to think deeply about the data they collected. Time and space must be set aside for students to truly look at their data for trends and come to generalizations.
Reflect/Improve: Time to reflect and record what went well, what needs to be changed to improve their design/plan based on their collected data Evaluate/Justify: Students discuss their findings, their conclusions and generalizations. They communicate with other engineers in the class and use evidence to support their explanations/ideas
Solution: Did the design/plan solve the problem? Were the needs outlined in the challenged met? How can the design/plan be improved? Time to try again by repeating the design process. Opportunity: Compare the methods and results of investigations done by other classmates. Keep records that describe observations made, carefully distinguishing actual observations from ideas and inferences about the observations.
Tried and True Method – Begin with an Early Exposure to STEM Engineering Design Challenge Centers Using Legos, build the setting of the story. Explain how George’s problem would have been different if you had been the civil engineer who designed the road.
Tried and True Method – Visits by female engineers and scientists bring STEM careers to life. Studies show that girls are especially interested in helping professions, and visits by female engineers and scientists bring these careers to life. For example – an environmental engineer explains how their job is to protect the water supply from pollution.
Tried and True Method – Robotics Math and Science Replacement Lessons These students are learning about numbers that are less than one, but more than zero.
Recruiting girls for STEM programs: middle school Mrs. Elizabeth Simpson Lead Teacher Greco Pre-Engineering STEM Academy Technology Education Instructor Twitter: @GrecoSTEM Greco Middle School, Tampa, FL elizabethe.simpson@sdhc.k12.fl.us
Goal of STEM/Career Academy Model: Increased Student Achievement Personalization Rigor and Relationships Relevance Classes are taught in a cross-curricular manner rather than in isolation of each other • The content a student learns in one class is reinforced in all of their classes •
Benefits of the Middle School STEM Academy Model Participation in the Middle School STEM Academy allows students to do the following: • Earn up to 9 – 12 High School credits • Visit and work with professionals in areas of students interest • Learn from an integrated curriculum • Be part of an educational cohort of students and teachers with shared vision and goals • Plan their college and careers with a clear focus.
Not Your Ordinary, Typical Middle School STEM Program 46.8 % of Students are Female 2015 - 2016
GRECO Middle School STEM Academy - Recruiting • Our main recruiting tool is word of mouth from our parents and students. • We travel to our feeder elementary schools and speak with 5th graders about our program. • We bring alumni from that elementary school.
• Girls quickly realize that though they may not be Lego experts or go home and spend hours building models or playing video games, they actually do share many qualities of a good engineer • Many female alumni engineering academy students have continued their STEM education as engineering students in high school and college • Girls tend to be more task oriented than the boys and on average are more organized in their study habits
Recruiting girls for STEM programs: District of Hillsborough County, FL T .R. Robinson High SCHOOL Mr. Jeff Kaloostian Colonel, USAF retired; 10 years teaching Career & Technical Education Department Chair Aerospace Technology Teacher jeffrey.kaloostian@sdhc.k12.fl.us
Hillsborough County Public Schools have over 400 unique middle and high school courses in Career and Technical Education Range across 17 career clusters Courses take place in a wide variety of environments, from the agricultural field to the computer lab to the welder 1 Robinson’s Aerospace Technology is the District’s ONLY high school level course of its kind Three feeder middle schools; all teach the first year of Aerospace Some females continue on to Robinson’s program Yes, that IS a jet engine! http://www.sdhc.k12.fl.us/doc/167/career-and-technical-education/about/cte-about/
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