Booster Packs, a resource offered by the Million Girls Moonshot initiative, encourage afterschool programs to delve deeper into Moonshot transformative practices, cultivating engineering mindsets in students and creating inclusive spaces in the world of STEM.
Angel Jackson, STEM Manager at the Boys and Girls Club of Greater Saint Louis, is currently implementing the Teen Science Café Booster Pack.
“We meet once a month, and we have a lunch where the kids get to meet with different professionals from different career fields,” Jackson said.
Together, they cover a wide variety of careers, from environmental science engineers to movie production. Facilitators themselves shouldn’t worry about their expertise regarding subjects in STEM.
“For the Teen Science Café, you as an individual really don’t need to be a master of the topic being discussed,” Jackson explained. “The person that you’re inviting, they’re the real professional, and they’re the one teaching the members about that specific topic.”
Laura Lytle, a senior program director at the Gateway Region YMCA, marveled at ease of utilizing the Techbridge Girls Booster Pack. She helped implement the program at the Emerson YMCA in North Saint Louis County.
“We signed up, we told them the locations we were going to do it at, and then we told them the number of girls we planned on recruiting for and they sent us a box for each group of girls,” Lytle said. “All of the supplies that they needed for the entire program, for every single project, came in the box and it included this T-shirt that has the Techbridge Girl on it, and they all really, really loved the T-shirts.”
The eight weeklong program explored a different career each session. The girls were able to complete short term projects with an engineering mindset rather than completing step by step instructions. For one week, they focused on graphic design and created Instagram posts representing their own brand identity. Techbridge Girls emphasized freedom of expression and inclusivity throughout each project.
“In every single one of them there were women and there were women of color that were represented with amazing things that they were doing in that field,” Lytle said. “[There was] a lot of representation that you don’t historically see in those fields.”
She recommends the program to everyone, even those completely new to facilitating STEM. After signing up, Techbridge Girls provides access to a monthly cohort meeting for beginners to share tips and tricks with each other.
“Anybody could pick these up and go with them,” Lytle said.
To see a list of the current and past Booster Pack opportunities available to afterschool programs through the Million Girls Moonshot, visit the STEM Next Opportunity Fund website at https://stemnext.org/engineering-mindset-toolkit/.
