How to Win Girls Hearts with STEM Education

[Music]

you’re such a nerd

no one likes you

another girl said that to me when i was

five years later i started my freshman

year at mit

and in my class men outnumbered women

two to one

today i’m an engineer an educator

an entrepreneur and a mom to two amazing

kids who love

stem my super power is my creativity

and i am not alone a microsoft study

found that 91

of 5th through 12th grade girls consider

themselves creative

and 72 percent say that a job that helps

the world

matters to them that makes stem

a great career fit for girls because

with science technology engineering and

math you can be creative

and help the world at the same time

so why is it that according to the

society of women engineers

only 26 of computer scientists

and 13 percent of engineers are female

clearly girls are checking out of stem

and we are missing out on all their

creativity

that’s a problem today i’m going to

share with you the three reasons why i

stuck with stem

despite what that girl said to me so

that you can help a girl in your life

stick with it too

and i’ll open up about my middle school

nightmare

because that’s when i struggled the most

being 12 was tough for me

the pre-teen years are when you start

caring about what other people

think and that turns middle school into

this giant dressing room where

everyone’s trying on new friends

and new identities to see what sticks

that’s the time when a girl might decide

she’s going to reject stem because she

doesn’t think it fits anymore

and it is not enough for you to reassure

her

oh you’ve got this uh-uh

she has to want it when i was in middle

school

my self-image was in the toilet and i

spent an

eternity in that dressing room but i

never

once shed my passion for

stem because at a time in my life when i

felt like a loser

three things lifted me up

dirty hands x-ray eyes and role models

they showed me that i could be a

superhero someday

and i spotted that cape and i wanted it

let’s go back in time here i am at age

four

and life was good because everyone’s

your friend when you’re four

here i am at age eight the start of the

tween years

and social awareness is just beginning

to creep in

here i am at age 11 and i was clearly

not one of the cool kids

but i was okay because i had a bubble of

friends but then the bubble

popped just like that popped because my

dad

was in the navy and he got transferred

from

pensacola florida to virginia beach so i

had to start seventh grade as the new

girl

that’s when i found out very quickly

everyone

is not your friend

at the bus stop this girl named lori

would point to my clothes

and everyone would snicker

and if you got straight a’s you had your

name read out loud in the morning

announcements

and when my name got red this girl named

sheena who sat behind me

leaned forward slowly and hissed in my

ear

you’re such a nerd no one

likes you

so after that

i begged one of my teachers to please

give me a b

even if i earned an a just so my name

wouldn’t come up

i started dreading school and when the

yearbook came out

i scribbled out my own picture

and i threw the book away i was being

made fun of for the way i looked so

guess what i started changing it

i bought the end clothes i started

wearing makeup

then i got this bright idea what if i

got rid of my glasses

so i asked my parents if i could get

contacts and my mom said well

i didn’t get contacts until i was in

high school so if you want them now you

need to pay for them yourself

so you know what i did i saved all my

babysitting money

for months and in eighth grade i

presented my parents with a wad of cash

and a newspaper clipping a local eye

doctor was running a contact lens

special

so i got my wish shedding the glasses

shut down this script that was scrolling

in my head that said

if you don’t look like a loser maybe

you’ll belong

now as an adult i know looks aren’t what

matter

but when i was 13 yeah they mattered

a lot and i was so convinced my life

would be transformed

that the placebo effect kicked in

i started reaching out to people i was

too intimidated to speak to before and i

discovered

they would talk to me so i started

making friends

back then you wrote real notes with

actual pen and paper and you slipped

them to your friends

and i soon had a whole pile of them

i got invited to parties and i even got

my first kiss i thought i had arrived

but there was a problem they say you’re

the average of the five people

you spend the most time with

let’s just say some of my new friends

were

good at coming up with bad ideas

but just in the nick of time my dad got

transferred again

this time to jacksonville florida so we

had to pick up and move all

over again that was a blessing in

disguise

because it forced me to hit the reset

button on my peer group

and i had a secret weapon i had

never lost my love through for stem that

whole time

and this time i looked for kids who

shared it

and were good influences on me

i ended up graduating at the top of my

class

earning a degree in engineering from mit

and starting up an optical fiber

facility for corning

in north carolina so throughout

all middle school i experimented like

crazy

i varied my friends my looks my identity

but i held stem constant

why because i saw three things

that told me stem was a super power

number one dirty hands

my seventh grade science teacher gave us

this unforgettable homework assignment

go in the woods find a puddle and bring

a jar of that dirty water to school

the next school day we found that the

classroom had been transformed and there

were microscopes on

every single table and he said

today we’re going on the great amoeba

hunt

inside your jars of water

when i found an amoeba i spotted it

myself and i had caught it myself

i felt powerful like a real scientist

and that made up for all those times

that lori laughed at me

and she knows whispering stuff in my ear

so get girls hands dirty

get them repairing bikes doing robotics

woodworking and at home

get tools in her hands it builds spatial

thinking and confidence you can start

with something small like hanging

pictures on the wall

and if your walls look like swiss cheese

yes so what she can spackle it

buy her a tool box for her birthday and

invite people

to help you fill it up every year

that’s a gift that she will treasure for

the rest of her life

tell her she can get something new for

her room but make sure it says

assembly required here’s the second

reason why i stuck with stem

x-ray eyes when i was growing up one of

my favorite tv shows was the super

friends and i loved

the wonder twins it was a brother and

sister pair

and they would transform themselves into

animals

buckets of water ice picks they were

creative and they would beat the bad

guys and save the day with their

creativity

that’s the kind of work that grabs girls

hearts

it grabbed mine with stem

you can be creative and save the day

every day that makes you

a superhero powerful

and valued and those were two feelings

i craved when i was in middle school

my grandfather had x-ray eyes he was a

doctor by training but he was an

engineer at heart

and he invented his own tooth flossers

decades ago because he was tired of how

every time he flossed his teeth if the

floss got too tight his fingertips would

turn purple

so he made his own tooth flossers by

filing down plastic forks

and attaching thread across the tines he

had countless prototypes and he’d show

them to me and he said

my idea can help other people it just

needs to be tested

and scaled guess what

that takes stem

someone else who had x-ray eyes was a 13

year old girl named susie mason

she had asthma back in the 50s the

medicine came in glass nebulizers

and susie was always afraid she was

going to break it or

spill it so she asked her father

why can’t my medicine come in a spray

can like hairspray

he worked at riker labs and so he posed

that same

question to the scientists there and

within months

they had invented the world’s first

pressurized metered dose inhalers

so here’s how you can help a girl

develop x-ray eyes like my grandpa

and susie had the next time she comes

complaining to you about something

that’s driving her nuts

ask her one simple question

how would you change this

frustration breeds creativity

that brings me to the third reason why i

stuck with stem and it is the most

important role models

so now you know from my story i had my

grandfather

and my science teacher help

girls find role models

watch hidden figures read books like

stem gems which feature female role

models

follow instagramers who show that stem

can be

fun and zany like mary anning’s revenge

watch talks by samayra mehta a girl who

invented a board game so that

other kids could know how to code or dr

joy wolfram who’s developing

nanoparticles to treat cancer

or dr sabrina gonzalez pastersky

a physicist who built and flew her own

plane when she was a girl

but do you want to know who the most

powerful role model of offer a girl

is it’s someone she knows

just an ordinary person

who’s blending stem and creativity to

help others

they might not be curing cancer or

designing drones

but stem contributions don’t have to be

glamorous

they just have to be meaningful

when i was an engineer for corning i was

helping make the internet faster

for people all over the world and

believe me

my work was powerful and

valued so girls

seek ways to be creative and to help

others

and stem gives it to them

join me in helping them see that

if you take nothing else away from this

talk

remember these three things dirty hands

x-ray eyes and role models

help a girl find those and you just

might unleash a superhero

thank you

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you