5 Ways to Get Girls Excited About STEM

by Robin Burr

I chose to teach in Berea because of the artist
community that surrounds it, the size of the school and new
opportunities. The thrill of a new environment (and the
opportunity be pushed outside of comfort zone and grow)
and the excitement of getting to know students in a new
community. I have taught for 21 years in schools that are
considered schools of poverty. As I taught the first week of
the 2017-18 school year, I quickly realized something was
different and unique about this group of kids. Many girls in
this fifth grade were very timid, cliquish, and lacked a great
deal of confidence in Math class; in particular. I knew I had
to change their minds and change their focus. When I
looked at those girls I saw myself, I saw my daughter, and I
saw many other girls I had taught throughout the years and I
knew this may be an opportunity to make change for my new
community. I had a chance to change their story, their
community’s story and their family’s story.
Here are five things that I have learned to engage girls in
STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) activities.

GET TO KNOW THE GIRL
Use an interest inventory to learn more about the lives of
students inside and outside of school. I know everybody
says, “ use an interest inventory ” but they work, if you utilize
them. Compile the information from the inventory and use
the information to better connect to the girls one on one.
I used the data provided by the interest inventories to form
natural groups for the robotic teams at our school. I also
began to have individual breakfast and lunch meetings with
the girls. My goal during the individual meetings was to
follow up on what I had learned and observed from teaching
them and to create a trusting relationship while modeling a
growth mindset.

Let GIRLS work with Girls
I have always heard and observed that ”girls travel in
packs” and it’s especially true for fifth grade girls. I have
always tried to find the perfect combination of gendered
heterogeneous groups. Sometimes it works, but sometimes
girlS work best with girls.
When it came to creating robotics teams, I created girls
only teams, heterogeneous teams, and boys teams. What I
learned was game changing. The members of the “Girl
Teams” were more engaged, excited and serious about
problem solving. The most phenomenal aspect of this
project was the fact that, over time, the girls started
out-performing boys in math class. They started to believe
in their own ability and by half way through the year in
robotics and STEM classes, the girl’s behavior problems
were reduced to a proud, nonexistent zero.

MENTORS FOR GIRLS
I thought about these girls and after getting to know them,
I realized most of them were missing a female role model in
math and sciences. The mentor I am talking about here is
not the “mentor” Joey spoke about on Friends.
The mentors I chose were strong, positive, female
engineers, scientists, or mathematicians. I started bringing
th ese leaders to class not only for the girls but for my entire
class, but I knew these mentors had to be females. Not only
did the girls love it and but all the student. I then partnered
each girl with either an engineer, a scientist, or
mathematicians. They communicate through email,
handwritten letters, or skype. We also met with the
engineers throughout the year at Lego competitions and
engineering. Through meeting and connecting with these
females these girls learned about the possibilities. One girl,
in particular told me, “ Mrs. Burr, I think we need to get more
girls on our robotics team.” I asked, “why?” She said,
“There is a whole bunch of girls who are just lost.” Of
course, my response was, “lost?” She then clarified, “they
just don’t know how great math and science are and they
sure don’t know how great girls are.”

MODEL AND PROMOTE GROWTH MINDSET
Probably the most important aspect of this is to model
growth mindset daily and with this I made it a priority to
model mistakes and how to handle mistakes.
I shared growth mindset moments of the girls and
celebrated each of them as much as possible. A great way
that growth mindset was visible was through the challenges
of lego robotics. The challenges that the teams had to solve
during Lego robotics were very rigorous and I allowed
freedom to fail and freedom to succeed.

HAVE FUN!
Smile, laugh, giggle and enjoy the girls in your classroom.
Joy of learning is a beautiful engagement strategy.
I found that when I started to allow myself to really enjoy
my time with these girls, they started laughing more and they
started to let me into other parts of their life. I think having
fun was my way into truly getting to know the girls and they
began to completely trust and understand me. Through
laughter I became more vulnerable and this was duplicated
with the girls.

These five principles are not a rigid list that must be
followed verbatim; but they are but a few aspects I have
observed that will engage girls in STEM. My girls have
grown over a grade level in math ability, have become more
engaged in school and learning, and are becoming leaders
in our school. I will continue to learn more about working
with girls specifically and I will keep pushing for greatness in
all the children that walk through my door. I do believe that
the world would be a better place if we had more females in
leadership positions, more females in engineering, more
females in medical fields, and more in technological fields. If
we want to change the world, we have to change the way we
teach girls in our classrooms.