Educator Voice: Bridging the STEM gap one mother and daughter at a time

by Tina Dietrich, director of STEAM and Innovation, Woodland Hills School District, Penn.

When I first started teaching VEX Robotics in my 3rd grade classroom, I was a veteran teacher with 25 years of K-6 teaching experience. After teaching for so long, sometimes you get stuck in the same routine. You veterans know exactly what I’m talking about!

But this STEM curriculum rejuvenated my way of approaching problem-solving with my students. I jumped right in and began learning with them.

During the early stages of this implementation, I kept hearing people say, “Young girls aren’t going to be good at building robots because they didn’t grow up building with LEGO sets like the boys.”

This made me realize just how many stereotypes are associated with STEM. Boys have long been encouraged to build and tinker more than girls at home and in the classroom. So I thought, “Can’t girls also learn to love to build and iterate robots, too?”

Let’s give girls the same opportunities to build and iterate robots and see what happens. After all, girls are problem-solvers, too.

Shortly into the program, I saw how much the girls loved the STEM curriculum and were having great success with it. I began to wonder why there was such a low number of women in STEM careers. I started doing my own research. The statistics amazed me.

• Girls and women are oftentimes steered away from science and math throughout their education, limiting their access, preparation and opportunities to go into these fields as adults.
• Some of the fastest-growing and highest-paid jobs of the future, like computer science and engineering, have the lowest percentages of women workers.
• STEM fields are often viewed as masculine, and teachers and parents often underestimate girls’ math abilities.
• Girls have fewer role models to inspire their interest in these fields, seeing limited examples of female scientists and engineers in books, media and popular culture.

According to aauw.org (American Association of University Women), women make up only 34% of the workforce in science, technology, engineering and math. That means that women make up 46% of biological scientists, 40% of chemists and material scientists, 25% of computer and mathematical occupations and almost 17% of engineers and architects.

As I stood in front of my class of 8- to 9-year-olds, all 25 of them, I quietly observed what was happening. Oftentimes, the boys would overshadow the girls. They would take the lead and tell the girls, ”I got this.” That sent the message to the girls that this is something they can’t do. Now it was making sense.

WATCH: Mother-Daughter STEM Night 2024 with Woodland Hills School District

So I tried a little experiment. I created homogenous groupings, and what a difference! Suddenly the girls were gaining confidence and willing to experiment more with their ideas. Now don’t get me wrong, the boys did become less focused and fooled around more, but the girls really took off.

I knew I needed to do something to empower our young girls and foster their love of computer science, technology, engineering and math. I started brainstorming ideas with another teacher to bring more exposure to our young girls.

That’s when our afterschool Mother/Daughter VEX Robotics Club was born. This program provides equity across our student population and their families by allowing ALL students the chance to explore the world of STEM and computer science through student-centered, project-based learning.

The mothers and daughters meet twice a month at the Rankin Community Center, in the Woodland Hills School District near Pittsburgh. Every session begins with a female guest speaker, which provides opportunities for our girls to see themselves in possible STEM careers once they graduate.

Some of these have included a Robotics Engineer (community member), an engineer (alumni) from MEPPI and engineering students from a local university. By including these types of guest speakers in our program, we hope to open up a broader mindset of opportunities within the STEM field for our young girls.

Next, working alongside their mothers, 4th and 5th grade girls work to turn piles of gears, pins, shafts, wheels, etc. into a robot they will learn to write code for to allow it to complete tasks. Afterwards, they will work to improve the code, as well as iterate the robot in order to make it more efficient to perform various tasks.

WATCH: Why students respond well to STEM in the classroom

At the end of every session, we use Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) journals to reflect on their experience and grow. They are asked to respond to a variety of prompts. For example: What was the most difficult part of working cooperatively in today’s session?

When one of our fourth graders, Kyra Scott, was asked about their thoughts on the program, they responded, “Not a lot of girls want to go into the engineering field, so this is kind of encouraging women to go into the engineering field.”

Kyra’s mom, Jill Porter-Scott, said that as the girls work on the robots, they’re learning skills related to STEM without realizing it. “It’s doing all the things in math and science, but they don’t even realize it. They’re just having a good time with it.”

Next, hear what the students’ themselves have to say! Read NewsHour Classroom’s Student Voice: Robots bring mothers and daughters together here.

About the author

Tina Dietrich is the Director of STEAM and Innovation for Woodland Hills School District near Pittsburgh. Dietrich transitioned from 25 years of teaching K-6, to expanding the district’s VEX Robotics computer science program from K-5 to K-12. Her goal is to broaden computer science offerings across Woodland Hills’ schools and the community, building on a successful second year. Dietrich’s most recent passion is expanding the knowledge base of the young female students.

NewsHour Classroom’s invention education program is a great place to include robotics and problem-solving. If you’d like more information about invention education or joining our fun network of invention educators — or if you’d like to write a Classroom Voices’ piece — contact Vic at vpasquantonio@newshour.org. Check out NewsHour’s invention education collection here and a list of lessons here.