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.
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