Five Things I learned from having an all-girls STEM class

This year I was lucky enough to have 24 girls in an all-girls STEM class. It was an idea I proposed to my principal almost 3 years ago and for the 2014-2015 school year we were able to make it happen.

I loved having my all-girls class. I loved them for a million reasons and I learned a lot from just teaching girls (and I was used to having almost all boys in my classes)—so they were a welcome change.

1. Girls love working in groups even more than boys do. I think it is the social aspect, but I never heard them complain when I assigned them to a group and I never had anyone ask me if they could “just work alone.”
2. Girls love to see how engineers make a difference in the world. The idea of an engineer being a super hero really resonated with them. If you haven’t seen this video, you have to check it out. https://vimeo.com/86537339
3. Girls will bring in their own materials from home. For example, when we would do Genius Hour, my girls class was the most organized, the most on task, and they brought in the most materials. I had one girl who made a dress, and bought the materials at Hobby Lobby—I had another group make ice cream and bring in all the supplies they would need—another group made a birdhouse and used some leftover materials from their recycling bin.
4. Girls can be nice to each other. Maybe it was my group of girls—they were just not the catty type?  My experience in the past with girls (even coaching them) was that they were really mean and kind of awful. My girls in my STEM class were amazing.
5. Girls don’t need boys to work with in a class. In fact, if they don’t have the boys as a distraction, they seem to be more at ease working with tools, they aren’t afraid to take the lead on the project; they are more willing to speak their mind.
    
   I don’t think I will be able to have another all-girls class this year, but I really feel that being able to have them for one year was amazing and a great experience for them and me. I know they will do great no matter what class they take or who their teacher is, but I hope we started planting some of those seeds to get them excited about a future career in STEM.