Tuesday, February 24, 2015

Presenting at my first conference...some reflections


Back before Christmas, I applied to present at the Texas Project Lead the Way Conference. The conference was to be held in Corpus Christi and this year I have really gotten to pursue my newest passion—recruiting and retaining girls in my STEM program (And helping others to do the same.) As I have started my Masters Degree this year, I have really enjoyed learning from my girls and I wanted to share some of my action research.

I had worked on my presentation for about 5 hours, and I had the hubby proofread it and formatted some changes. I was fairly happy with it.

And then it came to my actual presentation.

First, the presenter that was before my session went a teeny bit long. However, she is an energetic presenter. I enjoyed hearing what she had to say AND to her credit, she did help me set up the projector along with the speakers.  I am so thankful for that because I was having some technical difficulties.

Then for some reason my mouse on my laptop became disabled. (It still is!) This was a bit of an issue when I wanted to show my Youtube Video—however a gentleman in the front row was sitting right there and he helped me with the middle secret mouse—you know the button on the keyboard of a laptop?

I refused to be one of those presenters that fumbles around and wastes peoples time while they try to get a video to buffer. But, then I had another video that I really wanted to show, and I could not find a way to embed it. It was this Verizon Commercial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XP3cyRRAfX0, I was able to show it and it really is one of my favorites.

Some thoughts about my presentation:

  1. It was really fun to present about a topic that I love.
  2. I probably shouldn’t have used a baby picture of my daughter where she wasn’t wearing a top (especially when talking about equality for women). Thank you audience member for pointing that out.
  3. I hadn’t prepared for a couple questions. One lady kept asking questions and I kept saying, “I will get to that….or that answer is coming up.” Please give me a break, lady. Another question that was asked was, “Can you legally separate and create boys and girls classes?” Truly, I don’t know if it is illegal. Everyone is doing it. That must make it right?
  4. I am so glad I presented. When I graduated from high school many years ago, I would have never gotten up and talked to a room of about 50+ adults. (Adults are scary….kids I can handle.)
  5. I hope people left with something to think about and some ideas for recruiting and retaining girls in their STEM programs.

Monday, February 2, 2015

To the lone girl in my STEM class

Dear Lady,

I call you "lady," (its probably not the most politically correct) but you are the only girl in our whole cast of boy athletes...minus the 2 or 3 boys who are more artsy and less fartsy than the others.

I want to let you know that I think you are brave. It is not easy to be the only girl in a class of all boys. I admire you and I see so much potential in you.

I am afraid that I am not doing enough. I can't protect you from the comments that the boys make under their breath, or the times that you work alone…when everyone else has a partner.

I want to encourage you, and I try not to gush at the fact that you work so hard. I know that your hard work is going to get you farther in life than having a pretty face. Luckily, you have a pretty face and a strong work ethic.

You make me want to shelter my own daughter, but push her at the same time. I know she will be the only girl in her kindergarten class that can use a soldering iron, know how to make a series circuit and how to write computer programs before she can read. I want to teach her about "girl power" and how to stand up to those "mean ol' boys."

I hope I can convince you to stay with my class again next year, although I don't blame you if you pick another elective.

I don't know if this means anything, but because of you--I plan to work even harder to recruit more girls in my classes for next year.

I hope you realize that even though you are the only girl, you don't have to be the first one to help me--or to offer to clean up after everyone leaves…even though I appreciate it.

So for now, just know I am cheering for you. You aren't totally alone…I am here, too.

Sincerely,

Your teacher


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