So I was blessed with even more opportunities to give back to the community and teach 6-12th graders about STEM, the role it plays in their every day lives, and how they too can make a difference in the world of STEM. The first event was actually a Career Day at Wilder Middle School in Richmond, VA. The students were tasked to go to at least three of the booths (one being the one my friend and I was running) and ask the people at the booths about their profession and what they did to be successful in their careers. Well my friend and I ran the “Engineering” booth and while neither of us are fully established in our careers, it was still fun to teach them about what it meant to be a Biomedical Engineer (my friend) or an Electrical Engineer and the other different types of engineering they could explore depending on their interest.
They were extremely intrigued by the fact that up on my laptop was a description of a speaker and why there were paper plates sitting on the table with a cord attached to it! Well if you haven’t figured it out just yet I had made a speaker using a paper plate, a magnet, and a wire which I connected to an aux cord to plug into my iPod! The kids were AMAZED – and even some of the adults too!
The second event was the 12th Annual Girls are Talking Conference “Change Begins with Me” at J. Sargeant Reynolds Community College in Richmond, VA. I led two rotations for a workshop starting at 3pm. In this workshop I gave the girls the background of a speaker, the physics and electronics behind it and we then built the same speakers I spoke about earlier! Initially the girls were restless and bored out of their minds from sitting and listening all day; but when I told them we were building a speaker they perked right up! Some of them were really interested in how it worked – the others just want theirs to work so they could show the other girls that didn’t come to the workshop. All in all I’m happy that they learned something and was able to take something with them to show what they had learned in my workshop :).