Author: sylviamartinez

Sylvia Libow Martinez is an education change agent, writer, speaker, consultant, engineer, maker, and mom.
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Ahmed and his clock come to your school. What would happen?

On Monday in Irving, Texas, 14-year-old Ahmed Mohamed came to school with a digital clock he had built. He showed his Engineering teacher, who told him not to show it to other teachers. In English class the clock beeped and the teacher asked what it was. He showed her and she confiscated it.

Sometime later that day, Ahmed was called to the principal’s office, where he was questioned by police, arrested, and taken out of school in handcuffs. He was not allowed to call his parents.

They thought it was a bomb: 9th-grader arrested after bringing a home-built clock to school

I’m going to keep this post focused on the part that happened at school and the school’s reaction. You can read the rest — the charges have been dropped but the school suspended him for three days. You probably know about the huge social media reaction towards this story, including being invited to the White House by President Obama.

Personally, I think there is a racial and Islamophobic component to the reaction, most likely compounded by a climate of Muslim-bashing in the city led by the mayor. But even if that were not the case, I think there is much to learn about treating students.

So, what’s the lesson here? How would your school react?
You can’t really fault people for looking at this device and wondering about it. It does look like a “movie bomb” (as one of the police officers called it). Is everyone supposed to be an expert in what a bomb might look like? By the way, the photos make it look like a briefcase-sized device, but it’s actually a pencil case, about 6 inches wide. (You Be the Judge: Does This Look Like a Clock or a Bomb?)

Nobody wants to be the person on the news being asked, “Why didn’t you do anything?” after some disaster happens. “He seemed like such a nice boy” is not going to fly. In the wake of the Boston Marathon bombings and too many school shootings, people are more aware than ever that bad things can happen when you least expect it.

But the point of everyone being “on alert” for “suspicious activity” is lost when no one really knows what that looks like or what they should do when they see something. It leaves people open to speculating based more on fear and half-truths than on reality. Little brown boys become terrorists and criminals when imaginations run wild and imagine “what if” instead of dealing with the facts (and the child) in front of them.

A couple of initial points:

  • If the Engineering teacher thought that the device was suspicious looking enough to tell Ahmed to not show it to teachers, then he or she probably should have taken it at that point. Of course, hindsight is 20/20.
  • It’s certainly possible that the English teacher thought it was a bomb. However, if you think something is a bomb, do you hold out your hands and say, “give it to me” and put it in your desk drawer?

This, I think, is the point where the “bomb” stopped being important and the criminalizing of Ahmed started. If you have a “bomb” that you are really worried about, you call the police who bring the bomb squad. Irving is a major metropolitan area near the Dallas Fort Worth airport. There are people who know what a bomb looks like, and can deal with real ones.

The fact that this didn’t happen is the crime. The police were used not to ensure the safely of the school and all the occupants, but to simply show up to collect the “criminal”, already tried and convicted by school officials. And worse, they inflamed the situation with groundless speculation on the boy’s intent, concluding in an Alice-in-Wonderland-like fashion, that because Ahmed kept insisting that the clock was just a clock, he must be hiding something, which allowed them to arrest him for a “hoax bomb”.

Social media is mocking the teachers, school officials, and police because they couldn’t tell the difference between a clock and a bomb. I think that’s false – they knew the whole time that it wasn’t a bomb.

If you think you really are dealing with a bomb, you evacuate the school and let professionals deal with it. So obviously, someone made a decision at a very early point that this was not a real bomb. Demurring about that fact is simply a lie to cover up the mishandling of this situation.

But that’s not the real story. The outrage is that they cared so little about the welfare of this student to moderate their reaction with some common sense. They weren’t in a crisis situation, there was no danger to the school or the people inside. There was plenty of time to seek other courses of action and get more information.

Maybe someone who knew the boy should have been called, for example the engineering teacher, and obviously his parents. As Ahmed was led out in handcuffs, he saw his student counselor with a shocked expression – “the one who knows I am a good boy” said Ahmed.

Instead, he was questioned for 90 minutes by four or five police officers and threatened with expulsion by the principal if he didn’t make a written confession. Ahmed was not allowed to call his parents, even though he asked. All this time, the clock was in the same room. Obviously no one thought it was a bomb.

The school, district officials, police, and city officials insist that Ahmed’s name, religion, and race (his family is from Sudan) had nothing to do with his treatment.

However, the suspicion by the world that a climate of hostility towards children of color and/or Muslims exists seems justified by the lack of moderation and clumsy rush to judgment in the school’s and police response.

To this date, there has been no apology to Ahmed, nor has his suspension been rescinded.

In fact, just the opposite has happened. From the district, principal, mayor, and police chief there has been a solid stream of justification.

(from the Washington Post story) Irving Independent School District spokeswoman Lesley Weaver declined to discuss the case, though she confirmed that a MacArthur High School student was arrested on campus.

“We always ask our students and staff to immediately report if they observe any suspicious items and/or suspicious behavior,” she wrote. “If something is out of the ordinary, the information should be reported immediately to a school administrator and/or the police so it can be addressed right away. We will always take necessary precautions to protect our students and keep our school community as safe as possible.”

So here, the district is trying to portray the handling of this incident as necessary to “protect our students” and a matter of safety. This is obviously false, there were never any students in danger (besides Ahmed) – and they knew it.

The school issued a letter to parents and the community which was quickly mocked worldwide. It blames Ahmed and obfuscates the fact that when it counted, they felt it was perfectly fine to NOT protect one particular student. The condescending tone of the “helpful” advice is grating.

“I recommend using this opportunity to talk with your child about the Student Code of Conduct and specifically not bringing items to school that are prohibited. Also, this is a good time to remind your child how important it is to immediately report any suspicious items and/or suspicious behavior they observe to any school employee so we can address it right away. We will always take necessary precautions to protect our students.”

This is silly. It’s obvious that clocks aren’t on the list of prohibited devices. Plus, suggesting to students that reporting suspicious items or behavior will result in increased safety is obviously not true, since they just saw a classmate marched out in handcuffs.

A few days later, the district pulled a classic deflecting move, issuing a statement defending the English teacher – as if that was the problem. “We do stand behind what the teacher did,” [a district spokesperson] said. “We believe she was acting in the best interest for the safety of all 2,800 students at MacArthur High School. She followed the correct procedures.”

I’m sure the teacher who reported it believed that she was doing the right thing. In fact, if this incident had not gone viral, the Engineering teacher might be in danger of punishment since the “suspicious object” went unreported. In zero tolerance land, a teacher using good judgment and reasoning based on actually knowing a student is  in danger.

But everything that happened after the “suspicious object” was reported to school officials is the problem – one that the district and school are not talking about, much less taking responsibility or apologizing for.

Consider that this school has an award-winning STEM program and is one of a tiny percentage of high schools in the U.S. that offer ANY kind of engineering class. This school should have been the best place for a young student interested in electronics to share his passion and talent. What went wrong? What lessons can other schools learn?

So, for your consideration, here are some questions for those of you in schools.

  • How would your current procedures work if Ahmed and his clock  appeared in your school?
  • What are the procedures in place for dealing with a “suspicious object”?
  • What are the definitions of “suspicious object” and “suspicious behavior”?
  • What are the criteria for calling police to arrest or question a student?
  • In this case, there were two school resource officers (SROs) (police who are stationed on campus) who were involved with questioning Ahmed. At some point they were joined by additional officers called to the school. What are your procedures for calling in additional police? Do your SROs operate under different rules than “outside” police officers? How are SROs trained about school policy?
  • Do you know what the law says about whether minors have the right to have parents, guardians, or an attorney present when they are questioned by police, either before or after arrest?
  • What procedures are in place for allowing students to call parents? Is there a trigger for this (i.e., time spent being questioned, seriousness of incident, etc.)? If so, what is it? Is that fair and correct?
  • Is it school policy to ask students to confess or provide written statements under duress?
  • Who is responsible for issuing statements to the press or to social media speaking for the school in response to incidents? Are these statements (including tweets and Facebook posts) checked by anyone before they go out?
  • Does it matter if the incident goes “viral”? What happens to students who get in trouble but don’t get tweets from the President?
  • What statement would you write if you were a district official and this happened at your district?
  • Are there avenues to change course, change minds, or apologize if actions were taken in error? Who is responsible for that?
  • Some have suggested that apologizing to Ahmed or undoing the suspension would open the  district or city to a lawsuit. Do you have a firm legal opinion if this is true or not?
  • Is apologizing to a student seen as weak or an invitation to future troublemakers?
  • What is (or should have been) the principal’s role, both now and at the time of the incident?
  • If you reviewed your records, would a pattern of disproportionate disciplinary action appear towards any group? Do you have data to review? If not, should that be collected?
  • Beyond discipline, do you believe that children of color or of minority religions are treated differently at your school? Are parents treated differently? If so, what are you doing about it?
  • Ahmed says that he’s been called names like “terrorist” at school before. What is your school policy for incidents like this? According to existing policy, is that considered bullying? What measures are in place to deal with  it? Is it acceptable to say, “well, no one reported it”?
  • The Mohamed family says that Ahmed will transfer to another school. Does this close the incident at his current school? What should his current school do, if anything? If Ahmed showed up at your school on Monday ready to enroll, what would you do?

You’ve been handed a perfect case study for your next faculty meeting. And as any crisis manager would advise, the time to think about this is before it happens to you.

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Addressing micro-inequalities with micro-justice

A recent piece at Medium.com supports my argument that the “girls-in-STEM-issue” is more complex than just getting more girls to like science in school. “If you think women in tech is just a pipeline problem, you haven’t been paying attention”

It’s a very smart piece about this complex topic. I think the only thing I faintly disagree with is saying that “..leaders have to get rid of employees who engage in sexist or racist behavior” – I think that’s too late. It will be perceived as unfair and harsh, with bounceback attitudes that actually strengthen biases (“…women are too touchy – and now Joe lost his job…”).
I read an article the other day where a woman said every time she walked into the computer science building at college, people (nice well-meaning people) asked her if she was lost. Put yourself in her shoes. If you complain about that, it just sounds petty – but every time it happens it’s just another straw on the camel’s back that adds up to a clear message – you (and your ideas) aren’t welcome or wanted here.
Every woman I know has stories of the “micro inequalities” (NCWIT’s term) that add up to the feeling of not belonging.
The only thing I’ve seen work in the various workplaces I’ve been in is to strive to address ALL instances of sexist or racist behavior and language immediately and with fair, appropriate consequences.
In short, it takes vigilant leadership to create a consistent culture. For example, when meetings are fair, it’s because the expectation is that they are fair! Not sometimes fair, not that people apologize later, nor are things laughed off as being “no big deal”. The expectation is set every minute of every meeting – and especially not in some once a year “training”. Interruptions are not tolerated, language that denigrates anyone is corrected, and it happens in the moment. It’s too late if you only fix the headline-grabbing, egregious acts of discrimination.
The only solution to these “micro-inequalities” is “micro-justice”. Everyone at every level has to walk the talk and when incidents happen, no matter how small they are, no matter if they happen in the boardroom, the hallway, or the cafeteria, they must be handled in the moment with consistent corrections or restatements.
As far as how to do this, I just did a session at ISTE about Girls and STEM – collected a bunch of resources and am still working on writing up the gist of what I said. Slides and resources here.
One resource that I liked but didn’t have time to show at ISTE  (but I saved a summary of it in the slide deck, slides 29 & 30) – Top 10 Ways To Be a Male Advocate for Technical Women
I think we need to more actively recruit MEN into this by explicitly telling them what needs to change and what they can do. If we treat this as a “women problem”, men just think they should lean back and wait for women to “do something”. Men and women, boys and girls ALL need to be informed and empowered to do anything, and especially to know how to react to and fix the small things.
Consistent, caring cultures are built on “micro-justice” – fairly applied, consistently handled, and constantly reinforced both in words and deeds.
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“Do good work” – the power of a teacher

Milton Glaser on Art, Technology, and the Secret of Life

This video interview with Milton Glaser is really interesting – considered “the greatest graphic designer alive”. It’s well worth watching. He talks about art, making, teaching, and life. The section that starts around minute 12 shows the power that teachers have to change lives. How even the smallest personal gestures really matter to kids.

His words:

When I was in junior high school, I had the opportunity to take the entrance examination to either Bronx Science, which is a great New York school, or the High School of Music and Art, another great school. … And I had a science teacher who was very encouraging for me to enter into science — I was very good at science — and he wanted me to go to Bronx Science. And I was evasive about that, because I didn’t want to tell him that it ain’t gonna happen.

But the day of the entrance exam — they occurred on the same day — I took the entrance examination to the High School of Music and Art. And the next day I came into school, he was in the hallway as I was walking down, and he said, “I want to talk to you.” I said, “Uh-oh — the jig is up, he’s going to find out I took the ‘wrong’ exam.” He said, “Come to my office… Sit down.” And, as I was sitting there, he said, “I hear you took the exam for Music and Art.” And I said, “Um, yes.” And then he reached over, and he reached into his desk, and he pulled out a box of French Conté crayons — a fancy, expensive box — and he gave it to me, and he said, “Do good work.”

I can’t tell that story without crying, because it was such a profound example of somebody — an adult, authority figure, sophisticated man — who was willing to put aside his own desire for something, his own direction for my life, and recognize me as a person who had made a decision. And he was, instead of simply acknowledging it, encouraging it with this incredibly gracious and generous gift. … The thing about it that always astonishes you is that moment — it couldn’t have taken more than two minutes — was totally transformative about my view of life, my view of others, my view of education, my view of acknowledging the other.

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Noticing Tools – New Apps from NYSCI

The New York Hall of Science (NYSCI) has just released a set of apps called Noticing Tools.

size wise app
Size Wise app lets you explore ratios and proportions

The suite of five apps gives educators and parents a new option for inspiring kids to want to learn math and science by using technology as a tool for creativity and collaborative exploration on topics ranging from ratios and proportion to fractions, physics, angular momentum, surface area and volume.

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Back to school headlines – do your homework

Stories in the news like this drive me crazy: Kids have three times too much homework, study finds; what’s the cost?

It starts out:

Nothing quite stresses out students and parents about the beginning of the school year as the return to homework, which for many households means nightly battles centered around completing after-school assignments.

Now a new study may help explain some of that stress.

The study, published Wednesday in The American Journal of Family Therapy, found students in the early elementary school years are getting significantly more homework than is recommended by education leaders, in some cases nearly three times as much homework as is recommended.

I agree with questioning homework. Alfie Kohn makes the case in his book, The Homework Myth better than I ever could. (If you want to read a summary of his thoughts on homework, try this article from Principal magazine.)

So I start reading the CNN article with a personal bias towards agreeing with it, and hoping it makes good points that parents and teachers can really act on. The article says that kids are being assigned too much homework, even in kindergarten, where no homework is the recommendation of experts across the board.

However, I’m soon disappointed. First, they cite the “10 minute rule” from the National Education Association and the National Parent-Teacher Association. (10 minutes per grade level per night, starting in first grade.) However, if you click on the link, it takes you to an article on the PTA website, Hints to Help Reduce Homework Stress, which does not provide any information or research support for this rule. Poking around the sites shows a link to studies by Harris Cooper, PhD, such as this article Does Homework Improve Academic Achievement?: If So, How Much Is Best? with a sidebar summarizing his own analysis of homework research:

“The authors found that all studies, regardless of type, had design flaws. However, both within and across design types, there was generally consistent evidence for a positive influence of homework on achievement. Studies that reported simple homework-achievement correlations revealed evidence that a stronger correlation existed in grades 7–12 than in grades K–6 and when students, rather than parents, reported time on homework. No strong evidence was found for an association between the homework-achievement link and the outcome measure (grades as opposed to standardized tests) or the subject matter (reading as opposed to math). On the basis of these results and others, the authors suggest future research.”

While this is hardly strong evidence (especially in early grades), Alfie Kohn decimates even this, “For starters, there is absolutely no evidence of any academic benefit from assigning homework in elementary or middle school.  For younger students, in fact, there isn’t even a correlation between whether children do homework (or how much they do) and any meaningful measure of achievement.  At the high school level, the correlation is weak and tends to disappear when more sophisticated statistical measures are applied.  Meanwhile, no study has ever substantiated the belief that homework builds character or teaches good study habits.”

So, to me, there’s controversy about homework being worth ANY time, even the “10 minutes per grade”.

But even if you decide that some homework is a good idea, where does this “10 minute rule” come from? In her book, Rethinking Homework: Best Practices that Support Diverse Needs, Cathy Vatterot says “origin unknown”. It’s just something that’s been “long endorsed” by the NEA and the PTA. So it’s a rule that’s become a rule because lots of people repeat that it’s a rule. Vatterot also provides a long and interesting discussion about the limits and contradictions found in research on homework.

But back to CNN – to their credit, they forge on to present evidence that homework doesn’t help students, that homework stress is directly related to real medical problems, and that homework discriminates against families where parents are poor, less well educated, or speak limited English.

Then comes the “what can parents do” part of the article. Instead of suggesting that parents use the evidence that homework is useless, they quote experts about “solutions” like finding a quiet spot, and encouraging your child (but with vague warnings about not helping them too much).

If that doesn’t work, parents are encouraged to communicate with their child’s teacher to “problem solve” together. Is the problem solving about getting rid of homework? No, it’s about how to get the child to do the work, perhaps in less time or with fewer tears, but to still do the work.

So how about helping parents fix the actual problem – the homework. Why not suggest that parents take on the “10 minute rule” because it’s bogus. Why not suggest that teachers push back on homework policies in their districts – isn’t this the age of differentiated instruction? Don’t we care about research? This is especially true in schools where the 10-minute rule has morphed from “no more than 10 minutes” to “10 minutes every night”.

This is what bugs me. Articles for parents are always about fixing the child, or the environment, or their own attitudes. Even when studies show that the problem is the educational practice, parents are being told the problem is them and their children.

 

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Back to school already?

When I was a kid, back to school meant Labor Day in early September, and for most of the U.S. before the 1990s, that was true. But no more.

Data from MDR (a school data and marketing company) shows that “…roughly 25% of schools open sometime between Aug. 1 and Aug. 15 and another 25% before Aug. 31. Though every state has a number of early and late opening schools, early openings are concentrated largely in the South (AL, GA, KY, LA, MS, TN) and Midwest (IN, MO, OK, NE) along with AZ, HI, NM and roughly 45% of California’s schools. The majority of schools in MA, MI, MN, NJ, NY, OR, VA, WA and WI open after Aug 31.” (source: Anne Wujcik)

But how did this happen? CNN answers that question here: Back to school: Why August is the new September.

  • Testing: Since most standardized testing happens at a fixed date in the spring, starting earlier gives time for more test prep, and less time after the tests to “waste”. The trend to earlier openings started in the 1990’s along with No Child Left Behind.
  • Semester breaks better aligned to holidays: Starting in August means the first semester can end before the winter holidays. There can be a longer fall break in September or October, and spring breaks that fall more cleanly in mid-semester.
  • Alignment with college calendars: Colleges tend to end the year around Memorial Day.

One other reason that CNN didn’t mention is that in locations with a large immigrant population, many families go home to celebrate Christmas and need extra time for travel and traditions. In Mexico for example, the Christmas celebrations extend to January 6. Giving families an extra week off after New Year’s makes it more likely that all students will be back in school for the start of the second semester.

While it’s a shame that once again, testing is driving educational decisions, there is no magic formula for when school should begin or end. It’s changed over time in the U.S. and will likely change in the future. Here’s a fun list of school start dates around the world.

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Let’s stop lying to girls about STEM careers

We all want girls (and all young people) to have equal opportunity and to be whatever they want to be. But the reality is grim. Women are discriminated against in the workforce. They are paid less than men, promoted less, and listened to less. It’s not “perception” – it’s the hard truth. (See the research here.)  And it’s worse in many STEM careers, especially in engineering and programming. In college, women are discriminated against in courses, grading, and in getting mentorships that are so important for advanced degrees.

Trace back down this pipeline to K-12 and the facts don’t get any happier. Girls are called on less often by teachers, are seen as not understanding math even when they get (generally) better grades and test scores than boys, and not selected as often for STEM slots in academies and special programs.

But girls have an advantage — they are typically better at a wider range of things than boys. Girls who get good grades in math and science get good grades in other subjects too, whereas boys tend to get good grades in one area. Girls who score well on tests in math and science tend to also score well in language, history, and other subjects.

So when we complain there is a “leaky pipeline” in K-12 education for girls in STEM courses, it’s not just discrimination. Girls are choosing to not major in STEM subjects for the very reasonable reason that they have more options.

Why would you choose to go into a field that doesn’t want you? Painting a false happy-talk picture of “you can be anything you want to be” is simply wishful thinking. And really, let’s call it like it is, it’s lying.

Lying to kids is bad. Lying makes kids distrust adults and strangles the most important educational tool of all, a relationship of trust between educators and young people. Even when the lie hides harsh reality, even when we wish it weren’t true, it’s better to speak the truth — and then work to fix it.

Now – am I saying that we should tell girls to just give up? No. I’m saying we have to tell girls AND BOYS the truth. That there is unfairness and discrimination in the world. We should tell them because they deserve the truth. We should tell them because they should (and will) be appalled. We should tell them because it gives them a chance to think about how it should be different. And then we should teach them how to make the world a fairer place, starting today.

Because guess who can fix it – they can. Girls AND boys are the only hope that this changes, and we have to give them the facts and enlist them in the effort.

It’s not like they don’t know it already. In a Girls Scouts study, (Generation STEM), “… 57% of all girls say that if they went into a STEM career, they’d have to work harder than a man just to be taken seriously.” And African American and Hispanic girls are more aware of this than Caucasian girls. (Also from Generation STEM, “Half (50%) of African American girls (compared to 38% of Caucasian girls) agree with the statement: “Because I am female, I would NOT be treated equally by the men I studied/ worked with if I pursued a career in STEM.”’)

THEY KNOW….

These problems can’t be solved by sweeping them under the rug; they can only be solved when people clearly identify the issues and work TOGETHER to solve them.

What educators can do:

  • Arm yourself with the facts. I pulled together some resources for my ISTE session, Girls & STEM: Making It Happen
  • Talk with young people about stereotype threat, what it means, and how to overcome it.
  • Don’t just talk to girls about these issues – boys need to understand them too. The solutions must come from everywhere.
  • Boys and men are not “to blame” for how society treats women. It’s a long-standing issue, but one that can be changed by everyone working together.
  • Tell inspiring stories of women and girls – but also of men and boys who overcome obstacles and odds stacked against them.
  • This is not a “woman issue”. Use resources like: Ways to Increase Male Advocacy in Gender Diversity Efforts from the National Council on Women in Technology (NCWIT) and adapt for your own setting.
  • Address issues of discrimination in your own settings quickly and fairly. What you do (as the adult in the room) matters. But not just in the classroom, also in the hallway, gym, faculty lounge, conference stage, and offices.
  • Be mindful of your own behavior and try as much as possible to open the learning invitations to all students.
  • Look for opportunities to bring stories of discrimination (at appropriate levels) to students to discuss. What do they think, how do they feel about it, what do they want to change?

 

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My learning journey

People ask me often how I got involved with education. In part, my interest in learning stems from thinking about my own learning journey, and taking lessons from that path.

In school I did pretty well in every subject. Getting good grades was just expected. I was a solid B+ student in all subjects from kindergarten on. When I took Algebra 1 in ninth grade, though, that changed unexpectedly. Suddenly I knew everything the teacher was going to say before he said it. I always had time to do all the extra credit problems when we were only supposed to choose one. The teacher finally told me to cut it out. I spent every day on the phone with friends talking them through the homework problems. It bothered me somewhat that none of my friends were getting it, but I didn’t think much of it. It was just what I did – like my best friend who could magically draw perfect horses.

I was a good, complaint kid. When you are good at school type stuff and do what you are told, they say you are smart. But, for me at least, I never felt smart or special, it was normal to just get up every morning, go to school, and do whatever they said to do.

In high school I had the same math teacher for two years in a row and one day he called me up as the bell was ringing and said, “There’s not much that’s challenging you, is there?” He gave me a brochure for a summer program at a university for gifted math students. I was shocked that he thought that about me. I’d never thought of myself as being particularly good at math, it was just easy. It honestly never dawned on me that my friends not understanding meant something about me.

I keep this in mind when I work with kids – they are massively clueless about themselves and massively egocentric all at the same time. They do not realize that what they perceive about the world may actually be a reflection of their own talents. They have to be explicitly told what it is about them that is special. This does not mean blanket feel-good statements, that’s a waste of time. When you announce “You’re special!” to a room full of people, it’s obviously not true. That’s true at any age.

It takes a lot of adults talking with children, not at children, to help them realize that their own talents are unique and valuable.

It’s amazing that my parents let me go to that summer math program. I had never been away from my parents, didn’t participate in any after-school activities except music lessons, and had never gone to camp. This was going to be six weeks at a dorm on a college campus 100 miles from home. It was BIG.

That summer I met some amazing people from all over the US. The program was funded by the NSF and we took three college level math courses over the six weeks: Geometry, Number Theory, and Computer Science. We built geometry from the ground up, explored weird puzzle-like theories, and I got my first exposure to computers using punch cards and FORTRAN. And we stayed up late and ate ice cream for dinner and did the usual sorts of things 16 year olds do when away from their parents.

I discovered an amazing thing—I belonged. At my high school it was quite apparent that I didn’t belong. But that summer, I was just one of many like me. Even better, I was right in the middle of the pack. I wasn’t the smartest, but I wasn’t the slowest either. I wasn’t the geekiest or the coolest. It felt comfortable in a way that high school never had. I had talents that other people envied like being able to debug the FORTRAN programs. I needed other people because the Geometry was painful for me. The rule for Geometry class was that all of us had to prove ALL the theories. In Computer Science, we didn’t move on until everyone’s program worked. We weren’t supposed to copy each other’s work, but we could help each other and talk about it. There was no competition, no grades, and no tests. It was the perfect learning environment.

When I came home and it was time to apply to colleges, I didn’t know what major I would choose. I guessed that math would probably be a good major since I was good at it, so I might as well. It was a lucky chance that my parents asked my uncle to talk to me about my decision. Unlike my parents, he’d been to college, so he would know.

He asked me what I liked about math, and I said solving the problems. He asked, real problems or theories and proofs. Real problems, I said. Aha, he said, you should be an engineer. And as ridiculously simple as that sounds, that’s exactly what I did.

I keep in mind even today when I work with students and teachers is how seemingly insignificant comments and events can change a child’s life forever — if it’s specific and part of a real conversation.

In the years since I’ve been an electrical engineer in aerospace, a programmer, a student again, a designer and developer of video games and educational software, a manager, head of a non-profit, a mom, and more. But through it all I know that engineering (meaning solving real problems) is the lens through which I view the world and the way I approach the world. And I thank all the inexplicable events and people who helped me along this path.

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The Project Approach – a project-based-learning framework

The EKWQ framework was developed by Sylvia Chard, a leading project-based-learning expert and author of The Project Approach. This chart summarizes the EKWQ framework.

EKWQ – Experience, Knowledge, Wonder, and asking Questions

A Framework to Start the Project Process

EKWQ builds on student experience to generate authentic student interest in a topic, shared knowledge, and practice in exploring the known parts of a topic before tackling the unknowns.

Strategy

Teacher’s Role

Students

Examples: what students do
Experience Ethnographer – learn what students already know through observation Share & represent existing experiences with topic. Tell stories, write, draw, make paintings and collages, make clay models, construct with blocks, role play, etc.
Knowledge Support student activities and encourage deeper explanations. Deepen prior knowledge and develop expertise Interview/survey each other, take notes, collect data. Represent the collected research in charts and graphs. Develop theories.
Wondering Coordinate work to develop collective understandings and research process Learn what other students know and explore differences. Share expertise. Draw conclusions and explore areas of interest, unknowns, and curiosity.
Ask Questions Articulate – Help students turn “wonders” into driving questions Develop driving questions for projects. Create lists of questions. Brainstorm ideas and consolidate.

Note: KWL (a popular instructional planning tool used to create charts of “what we Know”, “what we Want to know”, and “what we Learned”) may sound similar. However, Chard notes that KWL was designed for instruction centered on reading of texts and is not enough for a project, and worse, KWL can inhibit the development of student interest.

Read more about The Project Approach.

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Girls & STEM: Making It Happen – resources

Resources for Girls and STEM presentations

Girls & STEM: Making it Happen Tuesday, June 30, 4:00–5:00 pm Sylvia Martinez PCC Ballroom B

Slides

Other ISTE events

Citations and other resources mentioned in this presentation

Maker

Invent To Learn

MakeHers: Engaging Girls and Women in Technology through Making, Creating, and Inventing (Intel infographic)

Power, Access, Status: The Discourse of Race, Gender, and Class in the Maker Movement

Leah Buechley – Gender, Making, and the Maker Movement (video from FabLearn 2013)

Associations

National Girls Collaborative Project (links to many others)

National Council of Women and Informational Technology

American Association of University Women

Unesco International Bureau of Education (IBE)  – Multiple resources such as: Strengthening STEM curricula for girls in Africa, Asia and the Pacific; 10 Facts about Girls and Women in STEM in Asia

WISE (UK) – campaign to promote women in science, technology, and engineering

My posts about gender issues, stereotype threat, and other topics mentioned in this session

Stereotype Threat – Why it matters

Inclusive Makerspaces (article for EdSurge)

What a Girl Wants: Self-direction, technology, and gender

Self-esteem and me (a girl) becoming an engineer

Research

Securing Australia’s Future STEM: Country Comparisons – Australian Council of Learned Academies

Generation STEM:  What girls say about Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math – Girl Scouts of the USA (2012) (Girls 14-17)

Effective STEM Programs for Adolescent Girls: Three Approaches and Many Lessons Learned

Women’s underrepresentation in science: Sociocultural and biological considerations. (2009)

Gresham, Gina. “A study of mathematics anxiety in pre-service teachers.” Early Childhood Education Journal 35.2 (2007): 181-188.

Beilock, Sian L., et al. “Female teachers’ math anxiety affects girls’ math achievement.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 107.5 (2010): 1860-1863.

Teachers’ Spatial Anxiety Relates to 1st- and 2nd-Graders’ Spatial Learning

Statistics

National Center for Educational Statistics

National Student Clearinghouse Research Center

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