Category: After School Blog

Every week, Jeremiah Thomas, a fifth grade science teacher at Elm Grove Elementary, gets to watch his daughter hypothesize, invent or test something new alongside 25 curious students.

Thomas brought Girlstart to Elm Grove in 2016 after championing the program at a different school for three years. He spends a little extra time at school once a week to make sure girls get to experience the joy of science.

“STEM teaches kids to be creative and solve problems,” Thomas said. “But a lot of times school is like putting a square peg and square hole. It robs kids of the creativity STEM requires.”

But Thomas said Girlstart helps kids reclaim this inventiveness. And he’s right. This week in Girlstart, students learned what it takes to be a mechanical engineer. They used experimental investigation to make a balloon car that could travel far and long.

Thomas said it’s projects like this that make his daughters more interested in science. Come science fair time, Thomas said they go “all in” with hypothesizing and inventing.

On this day, Thomas’ daughter squealed with excitement as her balloon car shot across the floor. It surpassed the length of the measuring tape and bumped into a table. The total distance? 172 inches: the farthest in the class.

Rubie proudly held up the project she had been working on for the past thirty minutes. In her hand was a bug made out of pipecleaners and clothespins, complete with a light dangling off its nose. Rubie proclaimed she had created an entirely new species— a “unifly.”

This week at Girlstart, the girls made their own light up bugs. Like last week, these projects focused on circuits: the complete path that an electric current travels along.

At the end of the hour, the girls jumped at the opportunity to present their creations. The energy in the room was electric as each team stood up and explained how the electric currents flowed from the battery to the light bulb. Of course, they also shared a little about their bug’s name and personality.

This week’s project cemented the girls’ understanding of electrical circuits. Each of the girls eyes lit up as the concept finally clicked.

“Last week I couldn’t get the light to work, but this week I get it,” Rubie said, smiling.

About 30 pairs of eyes stared in awe at the birthday card in Sydney’s hand. At first glance it looked like an average birthday card: a cupcake with a candle graced the front. But when Sydney pressed the corner of her paper, the candle lit up.

The girls looked at each other with wide eyes as Sydney opened the card to reveal a simple circuit.

Circuits are everywhere. We carry them in our pockets, wear them on our wrists and they keep our houses bright at night. This week in Girlstart After School, we learned just how common — and complicated — circuits can be.

Sydney passed out copper tape to serve as an electric conductor, a battery to be a power source, and a light bulb.

She explained that electricity from the battery should flow through the copper tape to the light bulb and then back to the battery. Any number of things could disrupt the flow: a tear in the copper tape, using too much clear tape to attach the battery, or not planning the circuit design carefully enough.

Each group encountered at least of these obstacles while making their cards. Dim lights tempted to frustrate them, but with the careful guidance of the STEM crew, they overcame them all. By the end of the hour, each group had completed a circuit and their cards were shining bright.

When 3rd grade teacher Christie Crouch studied biology in college, she often looked around her classes and noticed only a few other women in a sea of men. She said it sometimes felt like a game of “us against them.”

A few years later, the tables have turned. Crouch now champions Girlstart at Brookhollow Elementary in Pflugerville. It’s the club’s first year, and Crouch said nearly all of the fourth and fifth grade girls flocked to the sign-up sheets at the start of the year. So many, in fact, that the club had to be split into two sessions — one each semester.

Thursday, the class buzzed with excitement about this week’s project. About 30 girls took turns investigating what makes insulated cups so good at maintaining beverages’ temperatures, just like a new product engineer would. By the end of the hour, each girl had made her own version of a Yeti cup.

Crouch floated around the classroom with a smile on her face. She helped the girls cut tape and watched proudly as they presented their prototypes.

“The picture of what it looked like to be in science was very different back (when I was in school),” Crouch said. “It was fun, but I want to see more representation. It takes things like Girlstart to make that change.”