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Parents are empowering their kids to imagine exciting new careers in STEM

via FIRST

FIRST students learn real-world career skills through robotics competitions.

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In today’s rapidly changing world, most parents are concerned about what the future looks like for their children. Whether concerning technology, culture, or values, young people today are expected to navigate—and attempt to thrive in—a society that’s far more complicated than that of their parents. It’s one of the reasons why parents are keen to involve their kids in activities that will help them become more resilient, well-rounded and better prepared for life when they enter adulthood.

One such activity is FIRST®, a volunteer-based global robotics community that helps young people discover a passion for science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) through exciting, multifaceted challenges. FIRST helps kids ages 4 to 18 to build confidence, resilience, cooperation and empathy as they compete and collaborate with one another.

You may have seen the transformative power of FIRST programs featured in the new 2022 Disney+ documentary “More Than Robots.”


More Than Robots | Official Trailer | Disney+www.youtube.com

Through FIRST, students develop skills to help them thrive in changing times while connecting them with skilled mentors from as many as 200 Fortune 500 companies. These connections often lead to job placements in high-paying and rewarding STEM careers.

“If you want your child to be ready for the real world in ways that school and classroom experiences won’t necessarily fully prepare them for, FIRST is the program for you,” Erica Fessia, vice president of global field operations at FIRST, told Upworthy.

A wonderful example of the impact FIRST has on students is Aaron, who lives in Watts, an underserved neighborhood in south Los Angeles. Aaron was a reserved kid until he joined FIRST, where he developed a passion for robotics that pushed him to become a leader of his team, the aptly named TeraWatts.

Fatima Iqbal-Zubair, a schoolteacher and TeraWatts mentor, has seen Aaron make tremendous strides over the past two years. “He’s one of the most technologically competent students on our entire team. But I am 500% more proud of his growth as an individual in his confidence and his leadership,” she said, noting it’s the type of growth she rarely sees through traditional educational settings.

Aaron believes he has learned resilience through the program due to its fail-forward approach to engineering. “Normally, I get really frustrated when I can’t solve a problem,” he told Upworthy. “Robotics helped me to calm down instead of getting angry. If you don’t get it right the first time, you just keep trying, trying until you do.”

Problem-solving is an important goal of engineering and FIRST inspires students to stretch the limits of their innovation and imagination to reach their goals. When each annual FIRST season begins, student teams are assigned a sport-like challenge, typically themed around a critical global issue like recycling, transportation or energy, and are asked to build a robot that can compete in that challenge. They are given a kit of materials with limited instructions. It encourages them to experiment and attempt new iterations until the robot works.

When the students hit a roadblock, they can get help from adult mentors with either educational or professional experience in STEM fields. This provides the invaluable experience of working with positive role models who’ve made STEM their life’s work. It’s a big reason why FIRST students are better prepared for STEM careers than those who’ve only studied the subject in school (that is, if they even have access to STEM education in their school).

Afzaa Rahman has been a FIRST student for seven years as a member of the Durham, North Carolina-based Zebracorns. After high school, she hopes to pursue a degree in biomedical engineering.

“The Zebracorns have a special place in my heart as they have provided me with a community of individuals who stood by my side, willing to assist, support, encourage and motivate me in my endeavors,” she told Upworthy.

She hopes that being part of FIRST will inspire other girls to do the same. “It’s important that we leave our mark and continue to make meaningful contributions to STEM fields,” she said. “By participating in STEM, today’s girls and women will inspire future generations to do the same until we are no longer a minority.”

Afzaa’s father, Mujib Jinnah, encourages other parents to involve their children in the program, too. “I think other parents should definitely consider having their child participate in FIRST. In addition to STEM learning, FIRST encourages the development of teamwork and soft skills, which are essential qualities to enhance from a young age,” he told Upworthy.

One of the most important goals of FIRST is to recruit women and students from underserved or underrepresented communities into the program to help bridge the gap in STEM participation. This can help uplift individuals and communities by putting their issues directly in the hands of a new generation of problem-solvers.

“When we talk about diversity in technology, we talk about bringing more voices into technology,” Fazlul “Fuzz” Zubair, systems engineering department manager at Raytheon Technologies and mentor of FIRST team The Vitruvian Bots, told Upworthy.

“When young people of all backgrounds learn they can get into technology, they bring the issues they see to the forefront and say, ‘I can solve this with technology.’ That way you don’t just get technology that’s developed for one class of people,” said Zubair. “We need more developers from underserved areas because they understand the issues.”

FIRST robotics challenges inspire competition and cooperation—what it calls Coopertition®. Two teams may be competing alongside one another in a challenge and then later compete against each other. To make this work requires another FIRST value: Gracious Professionalism®, a term coined by the late Dr. Woodie Flowers, a distinguished MIT professor emeritus and a pioneer in hands-on STEM education, including many years spent tirelessly supporting FIRST.

“The ethos of Coopertition and Gracious Professionalism encourages all who participate in the FIRST community to emphasize and respect the value of others and their opinions, including those that might differ and differ strongly from yours,” Fessia said.

Iqbal-Zubair says that, win or lose, the unique nature of the competition builds practical empathy that students won’t learn elsewhere.

“You can be kind to a team and understand what they’re going through in one competition. Then, work against them in the next and be gracious in both situations. That takes a lot of empathy,” she said. “FIRST requires technical empathy, emotional empathy and strategic empathy,” she added.

Keys to thriving in a world where change is happening at a breakneck speed are resilience and flexibility as well as the 21st-century skills of cooperation and empathy. FIRST students are developing those skills while building some pretty amazing robots, too!

FIRST is open to students from the ages of 4 to 18. To learn more about FIRST programs in your area and how to become involved, go to firstinspires.org.

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These girls are using their love of science to bridge international borders.

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XQ

Every day, hundreds of kids in Mexico wake up extra early to cross the border and attend school in the U.S.

It's an unusual commute with border traffic, security checks, and metal detectors all before your first class, but parents jump at the opportunity to have their kids educated in the United States. And for the most part, the schools are happy to have them.

The border in El Paso, Texas. All images via XQ Super School Project.

It's no secret that many of these kids face serious disadvantages in school. There are language barriers and discrimination to deal with on top of the fact that many of the children come from impoverished communities.

Additionally, the proposed border wall between the United States and Mexico threatens to tear some of these communities in half and leave kids further behind.

El Paso, Texas, is a city that shares a deep relationship with its twin city — Ciudad Juárez, Mexico.

The teachers in El Paso welcome Mexican students as their own and recognize that giving them the best education possible isn't just the right thing to do, it's essential to building a better world.

"It's really important for people to understand that Ciudad Juárez and El Paso, we are one community," says Liza Montelongo, executive director of the El Paso STEM Foundation. "Yes, we have a river that divides us, and yes, we are two countries, but ultimately if we are depriving one part of our community, then we are doing a disservice to all of us."

To help bring their community together, one school in El Paso decided to form a group that takes aim at another issue.  

Women entering careers in science, technology, engineering, and math face a multitude of barriers. There are large systemic biases like the gender pay gap as well as smaller, more personal impediments.

For example, young girls who do well in STEM classes are often teased, and their potential interest in the subjects isn't cultivated as much as it might be for a young boy.

That's where the "Chicas" come in.

XQ Rethink High School: El Paso

They may live in different countries, but they tackle science projects together as classmates.

Posted by Upworthy on Wednesday, November 1, 2017

The Chicas are a badass group of girls who are bridging international borders with their love for science.

They work together building robots, programing computers, and cultivating their love for STEM.

"As girls get older, sometimes it's not cool to be smart," Montelongo says. "So our goal is to try and say, you know what, it's OK to be a nerd."

Not only are the Chicas helping to close the gender gap in STEM, they're creating leaders in a marginalized community.

People in STEM are the leaders and innovators of the future. They're the ones who can use their talents and out-of-the-box thinking to solve the biggest problems facing the world — and research shows that when STEM fields are diversified, they produce better ideas.

For the twin cities of Ciudad Juárez and El Paso, the Chicas provide an opportunity to come together and celebrate a common passion.

"It doesn't matter if you live on the north side of the river or you live on the south side," Montelongo says. "We need to be able to give them some type of opportunity to be able to have their dream."

It's a simple idea — bringing marginalized students together to celebrate science — but anyone who loves STEM knows that simple ideas can change the world.

Learn more at XQSuperSchool.org.

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How do we get more diversity in tech companies? Easy: Pay for it.

Too often, inclusion takes an 'add women or people of color and stir' approach. Not this time.

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State Farm

If the tech industry is serious about diversity, it’s time for them to invest in it.

That's the way one woman saw it, at least.

WhenMichelle Glauser realized that less than a third of people in the industry are women who will likely never see the boardroom and that many major tech companies are employing people of color at astonishingly low rates — black Americans in particular make up just 7% of the workforce — she saw an opportunity.

"It’s not easy to find teachers who are willing to leave the industry in order to teach," she explained. But that’s exactly what Glauser did.

Through her company, Techtonica, Glauser is teaching women from all walks of life how to code — and she’s called on companies in the industry to back her.

Techtonica is diversifying tech in the Bay Area by offering a tuition-free program that prepares women and non-binary people for careers in software engineering. The tuition is paid for by partner companies, who are then matched with students to hire after graduation.

"If the people who aren’t able to afford this education could partner with the companies, they could help each other out," Glauser explains.

In a way, then, Glauser is playing matchmaker.

Tech companies have a diversity problem. This woman raised her hand to help solve it.

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Too often, calls for inclusion take an “add women or people of color and stir” approach.

But this assumes that diversity is about hiring more people, ignoring the serious lack of access to opportunity. Her company is addressing both by asking for mentorship and the chance to hire disadvantaged residents within their respective communities.

If we want marginalized people to get a foot in the door, we have to open that door first.

In the Bay Area especially, the tech industry has priced low-income residents out of the cities where they grew up, driving up the cost of living and increasing the wage gap.

The irony here, then, is that the tech workforce hardly reflects the communities where they’re based.

If tech companies are as serious about diversity as they say they are, are they now willing to invest in it? Techtonica is betting on it.

"I didn’t feel like there was the support to actually succeed in computer science as both a woman and as a person of color," Tonka, a Techtonica student, explained.

That’s the real drive behind coding academies like Techtonica. Students of color like Tonka can’t — and shouldn’t be expected to — make support appear out of thin air.

Considering the cost of education (not to mention child care, a laptop, and living expenses), there are countless barriers to tech, so a tuition-free model seems like the solution.

This model relies on the good sense and good ethics of tech companies.

Diversity can’t just be a hiring philosophy. When combating a system that keeps marginalized folks out of tech, it also costs money.

It’s money well spent, though, as evidenced by the first Techtonica cohort. 71% of these students are low-income people of color, all with a serious passion for computer science.

Nefis, a student at Techtonica, shared, "I’m following something that used to be a dream and is now a goal. I’m a part of the world that I feel I belong in."

The students at Techtonica aren’t just learning to code either — they’re organizing.

This team effort is not only getting Techtonica off the ground, but it’s challenging an industry that for too long has ignored the needs of their communities.

Utilizing social media and outreach efforts, they’re hard at work securing sponsors and mentors. The company also provides diversity training to the teams where graduates are placed, and they organize local coding workshops in an effort to maximize their impact.

Diversifying tech, however challenging it might be, is an important and necessary step. Not only do we create more access to exciting and stable careers for marginalized people, we also better the industry itself with new perspectives, experiences, and ideas.

Companies are truly only as strong as they are diverse. But the question remains: Are they willing to pay for it?

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YouTube's CEO blasts that sexist Google memo in a powerful, deeply personal essay.

“Mom, is it true that there are biological reasons why there are fewer women in tech and leadership?”

Of all the people to field that question, it's somewhat sobering that Susan Wojcicki — the CEO of YouTube — would be asked it by her own daughter.

"As my child asked me the question I’d long sought to overcome in my own life, I thought about how tragic it was that this unfounded bias was now being exposed to a new generation," Wojcicki wrote in a powerful and deeply personal new essay published by Fortune.

Photo by Kimberly White/Getty Images for Vanity Fair.

Her daughter's question was prompted by a leaked internal memo written by an engineer at Google, which owns YouTube.

In case you literally missed the memo: James Damore, a former senior software engineer in Google’s search division, sent out a jaw-droppingly offensive analysis to his co-workers falsely asserting that there are biological explanations that justify a lack of female representation in tech fields.

With the memo, Damore was intending to curb bias among his colleagues that, in his opinion, unfairly attributed too much of the gender gap in tech to social factors (like sexism and implicit bias). The problem is, the gap exists solely because of those types of factors — not biological ones. His memo, which sparked frustrations and anger among Google employees, eventually leaked to the press. Damore was fired on Monday.

Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images.

Not only was the memo painfully inaccurate in explaining how biological differences between men and women supposedly justify the gender gap in tech, it also did very little in pointing out the systemic barriers and implicit biases that actually prevent women from excelling in the industry.

The memo was especially appalling to women like Wojcicki, who's spent much of her adult life overcoming very real(aka, absolutely not biologically based) barriers and biases against women in tech.

As Wojcicki wrote in her essay (emphasis added):

"I’ve had my abilities and commitment to my job questioned. I’ve been left out of key industry events and social gatherings. I’ve had meetings with external leaders where they primarily addressed the more junior male colleagues. I’ve had my comments frequently interrupted and my ideas ignored until they were rephrased by men. No matter how often this all happened, it still hurt."

Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images.

In her essay, Wojcicki also spelled out why Damore's firing isn't a matter of free speech, as some have argued. "While people may have a right to express their beliefs in public, that does not mean companies cannot take action when women are subjected to comments that perpetuate negative stereotypes about them based on their gender," Wojcicki noted, calling discrimination of all kinds against all groups of people inexcusable.

"What if we replaced the word 'women' in the memo with another group?" she wrote. "What if the memo said that biological differences amongst Black, Hispanic, or LGBTQ employees explained their underrepresentation in tech and leadership roles? ... I don’t ask this to compare one group to another, but rather to point out that the language of discrimination can take many different forms and none are acceptable or productive."

For Wojcicki, this issue isn't just personal to her — it's one that's shaping how her own child sees herself and her future.

So it makes sense that the YouTube CEO gave her daughter an answer that cuts straight to the truth.

"Do differences in biology explain the tech gender gap?"

"No," Wojcicki told her daughter. "It’s not true."

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