We invite all school and after school communities across Texas to celebrate Girls in STEM Day on March 1 exuberantly – and to make it a time for meaningful activity and conversation! We hope that all students and their educators will engage with each other about the meaningful contributions of girls and women in STEM and also about their awareness of their personalized journeys in developing their STEM mindsets. At talkSTEM, our mission centers around growing STEM mindsets in all children especially those from underrepresented groups. Sadly, girls and women, even in the current time frame, remain underrepresented when it comes to participation and leadership in STEM fields. Let’s change this by showing our youth that every girl is a STEM girl and all her places are STEM places!
For classrooms interested in sparking rich conversation, we recommend using the Women in Tech playlist from our open-access video library, consisting of 10 short videos from a panel discussion that included women tech leaders from American Airlines, Texas Instruments, and other businesses. Questions such as “what is a STEM mindset?” “What implicit biases have you witnessed?” and “what do you wish someone had told you when you were younger?” are discussed by panelists.
In addition, we invite all educators to visit our our open-access video library to find even more video resources designed to inspire meaningful conversation and foster STEM identity-building. In our online video library, you can use the “Broad Theme” filter provided and select “Girls/Women as Role Models” from the dropdown menu to select from 35 short videos. All these videos allow for rich dialogue and conversation in classrooms. We hope that you find these resources helpful and would love for you to share your thoughts and reactions with us on social (X/instagram: @talkingSTEM). Use #TexasGirlsinSTEMDay #HB3435
To encourage more girls toward careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, Texas House Representative Rhetta Bowers helped pass House Bill 3435 in, officially designating March 1 as Texas Girls in STEM Day since 2020. It’s just one day but the conversations that start on this day can continue on daily basis. We sincerely hope that all educators will purposefully spark some long-lasting conversation with their students!
Dr. Koshi Dhingra has dedicated her career to STEM education and is passionate about having every child live up to their potential. Seeing a lack of girls and other underrepresented youth in STEM programs, she founded talkSTEM in 2015 to address the imbalance. She has a doctorate in science education from Teachers College, Columbia University, has years of experience teaching in graduate and undergraduate programs, and has held leadership roles in universities. She advises and collaborates with a broad range of educational institutions globally. Dr. Dhingra began her career teaching science in middle and high school in New York. She lives in Dallas, Texas with her husband, three children, and two dogs.
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