“What are ways I can learn more about coding?”, “How did you build that website?” ,“Can I be an engineer even if I don’t like math?”and on and on.
Our #GirlDay webinar was filled with all sorts of questions as girls sitting in classrooms (or at home on a snow day!) asked the female engineers of Education Elements why they liked engineering and what they did to be successful. They asked them about courses and about mentors, about career paths and about options. And when it was done? They asked for more. One group of high school students asked if they could schedule another time to ask more questions. Our response: Absolutely!
Here is the thing about the female engineers at Ed Elements – they are awesome (as a non-engineer I can say this without bragging about myself). They are an amazing group of smart and interesting women. And while by day they do everything from create data to analyze and visualize data to build platforms and partnerships and websites, by nights they do things like dance the tango, take care of their kids, do arts and crafts and play with their parrots. It’s why they decided to create our #GirlDay website and do a webinar. Everyone wanted to prove “not all engineers are boring!”
It all started with an innocent conversation about getting girls excited about engineering and about breaking stereotypes. “I wear heels and lipstick!” one engineer said. “I am happy to also be a mom in addition to an engineer,” said another. And from there it turned into an idea for a website (they are, after all, engineers). They decided to write a poem and then, because part of the best thing about a poem is reading it out loud, decided to do a webinar – and share both the poem and the stories that inspired it. And as more and more people signed up for the webinar – from both inside and outside the US (I think our farthest flung registrant was in South Africa) – everyone got more and more excited. And more convinced that this little side project was going to have just the impact they hoped it would.
The night before the webinar I got a lot of emails about it. My favorite was from an 11-year old-girl named Maya who realized she wanted to be an engineer just a few months ago and had some burning questions. She talked about an experience she had with Legos, with building and with teachers encouraging her. We all read it and replied to her questions and thought, “Yes. This is what GirlDay is all about.”
But we don’t want this to end with GirlDay. We want every day to be about encouraging girls (and boys!) to be bold and to do something they love. We want every day for to be about students exploring things that interest them, about learning more about future career paths, and about being proud to be who they are – especially when they are a #girlgeek!
So check out the webinar slides below and recording or visit our GirlDay website. And include us in your tweets @edelements #girlgeek. And if you have a minute, tell someone they did a great job building something - maybe you will inspire them, like that teacher inspired Maya.
