STEAM MOMs

Minnesota is behind in STEAM education.  For the past two years, the majority of students failed in Math assessment using Career and College Readiness benchmark (Annual Report on Learning Year Programs, Dept. of Ed.). This distressing state of affairs is driven by a multitude of factors, but foremost among them is the inadequacy of school resources. As reported in the 2021 and 2022 State of Computer Science Education reports from nonprofit Code.org, for the surveyed years, Minnesota ranked last in the nation for the percentage of public high schools offering foundational computer science courses. Just 21% of public high schools in the North Star State offer such courses and the national average is 53%. The same report also noted that nationally, only 32% of students in high school computer science courses were female. And this percentage dropped to 23% in Minnesota. 

Minnesota is also facing teacher shortage. A new report compiled by Minnesota’s Professional Educator Licensing and Standards Board, found nearly 9 of 10 districts (84%) report being “somewhat significantly” or “very significantly” impacted by the teacher shortage. That number is up from 70% in 2021. 

Therefore, we are in great need of a solution that could address the devastating situation of STEAM education in Minnesota without placing excess burden on teachers. 

Parents play a vital role in children’s development. And children tend to look to their parents for guidance or examples of lives. Therefore, a clear and strong presence of Moms in the STEAM field will be able to inspire children, especially girls, to pursue STEAM futures. 

At YACA, parents have always been a strong ally to the school in providing the best education to our kids. 

So naturally we, the parents, are answering the call to take action in STEAM education in our school and our community. 

We are determined to unite parents, mainly Moms, to advocate for STEAM education for all children in our schools, our communities and eventually our state. We will also promote core values such as equity, inclusion, teamwork, and fun, among our children so that we could prepare them for a brighter future. 

At the same time, given our backgrounds, STEAM MOMs will design and deliver educational STEAM activities in a way that will complement standard school curriculum. Examples are data science classes (story telling using ArcGIS), robotics teams (First Lego League), and fun mathematics clubs (Number Detectives), to name a few. We will put special effort on targeting girls and non-binary genders, showing them what they could achieve in STEAM fields, and how they could make their dreams come true, using our great Moms as role models.

We will start with our school, a k-8 elementary school in Minneapolis. We will provide creative STEAM activities, in forms of enrichment classes, interest clubs and weekend events, to our children, with a focus of inclusion and equity. We will take extra incentive to target girls and non-binary genders in our solution. For example, most of the programs will be run / led by moms, which is our way to speak directly to girls on what they could achieve in STEAM fields. We will also encourage girls to take more responsibilities in team efforts, such as becoming the leaders or organizers of school robotics teams that will compete at local or national events. 

We hope we can expand our service to schools in nearby school districts in the next 3 years, such as MPS, SPSS, isd 623 etc, and reach the entire Minnesota within the next 10 years. 

Our ambition is built on our understanding that parents' involvement will benefit school-age children at multiple levels, such as improved academic performance, increased motivation and engagement, and enhanced social and emotional well-being. We also believe with the consistent reinforcement of values and expectations from parents, the students could achieve long-term educational success. Eventually, parents' involvement could address the devastating situation of STEAM education in Minnesota.

We are MOMs and DADs. We know our children, our teachers, and each other! After all, we are the community!  When our community calls for action, we, the parent, are always the "first responders". 

Base on the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) 2019–29 employment projections, occupations in the STEM field are expected to grow 8.0 percent by 2029. So the school and the parents started to calling for more extracurricular STEAM activities after the pandemic.

A few of our parents, mostly moms, answered the call by delivering fun STEAM enrichment classes at the school in 2022. These classes were very welcomed. So the mom instructors were asked to provide more such activities by both the school and other parents. 

Then the few parent instructors started conversions with the school, the parents, and the community organization YACA, and got prevalent support. Everyone agreed that 1) we need more quality STEAM education at school, and 2) support from parents is vital. 

Later, with the help of the school and the community, the parent volunteers started to plan for the "STEAM MOMs" program. We call it "STEAM MOMs" because 1) moms were more involved in the class delivery and 2) we observed less girls taking the enrichment class. So we chose to use "MOM" in the title to inspire girls. That is to say, dads are working together with moms to make this program working.

After all, "STEAM MOMs" is a community-based program. It is designed and delivered by our community members. Its ultimate goal is to serve our community and make our community better.  Finally, since "STEAM MOMs" is a program by YACA, it will be governed by the YACA community board as well, which means we will host regular community meetings to get feedback on program's well-being.

When our school called for help with extracurricular activities in 2022, a few of our parents, mostly moms, took action to deliver fun STEAM enrichment classes at the school, such as Crazy Fun Science for middle schoolers, Magnet Fun and First Lego League Robotics to lower grades. Because these classes provided age-appropriate fun and inspiring activities to the students, they were very welcomed not only among students, but also among parents. For example, at the celebration event for the Lego Class, interested parents and students overcrowded the classroom where students showcased their robots. So it was very naturally that these mom instructors were asked to provide more STEAM classes by both the school and other parents.

This was when "STEAM MOMs" got into shape. 

We started conversations with the school, the parents, and YACA, the non-profit school-parent association, and got prevalent support. We came to the realization that 1) people are looking for changes or improvement in STEAM education in Minnesota, 2) educators are eager to implement complementary extracurricular STEAM classes, and 3) we have a great resource of parent volunteers who have matching STEAM background and are willing to inspire children. 

However, through the enrichment class, we also observed first-hand that girls were less involved in STEAM activities compared to boys. This again rings the alarm to us that we need to address gender equity in our classroom, immediately, and from very beginning. We can't make more girls to code after they enter high school, just like we can't fix the foundation once the house is built.

With all these ideas and difficulties and challenges in mind, we design our solution first for our school. The front line of our solution is the enrichment classes, when we can directly interact with boys and girls and non-binary genders on what we can do and how we do it. Additionally, for the coming 2023-2024 school year, we will form a few "Girls heart Robots" teams for the 2023 Lego League challenge, and we hope to boost girls involvement in STEAM by providing weekend MakerSpace.  

Since we have already delivered some targeted service and planed activities for the coming year, our solution is not a concept but a feasible prototype that has the potential to achieve our business goals, which are 1) advocate for inclusive and equal STEAM education for all genders in Minnesota, 2) deliver extracurricular STEAM activities to k-12 children, and 3) inspire girls and non-binary genders to purse their dreams in STEAM field.

We are a community-based organization. We are run by volunteers. And the only support we have now is from the school and the community. This is not enough, because we are addressing an urgent issue faced by a much larger population, say our state. We believe our model, parent-led innovation on children education, is the right and efficient way to provide quality targeted STEAM education in elementary schools when the state is facing teacher shortage.

But again, we are just one community with enthusiastic volunteers. We will need systematic help to structure our program to make it feasible and accessible by a broader audience. We need advice from business consultants on program operation, such as how to financially support our program and make it grow.  We are also eager to connect with available supportive network to share their resource or share our resource with. We believe collaboration is the key to success.

Therefore, we believe this challenge is a perfect opportunity to give our solution a boost. We would use this opportunity to educate our personnel on business operation and outreach, to get a start funding that will supply equipments, such as mobile STEAM stations, and to connect with other programs that are also trying hard to resolve the equity issue in STEAM education. After all, we dream to bring positive changes to our kids, our school, our community and our country.

Dr. Zhang is the parent of a 7 year old student at Yinghua Academy, and she is an active volunteer for the school and the community. Even though, she joined YACA community just two years ago, she has served as the classroom coordinator, and been one of the STEAM Moms who delivered enrichment class (First Lego League class) to 1st - 4th graders at Yinghua. She has built a trustworthy relationship with the school, including directors and teachers, as well as the parents and other YACA members. So she understands the issues we are facing, and has the motivation and ability to provide the solution. 

Lack of resource is the top issue faced by public schools in US. Schools need more supply, more teachers, more space and more money in order to provide basic education to our next generation. Overall, our schools are in great urgent need of support from everyone, not only governments but also every member in the community. So here, we proposed a community-based solution to complement school education. Compared to the normal cycle of "parent complain - school apply for resource - get resource - implement a solution", we are a real parent-driven solution, because we are not waiting for the resource to become available at school.  We provide the resource and implement the solution in a timely fashion.  This will enable our school to adapt to social changes quickly so that our children could cope with the changing world better. 

For the first year, we aim to bring diverse STEAM programs to our school, and start to gauge interests among girls for more focused programs. We will host weekly or bi-weekly MakerSpace when our students could showcase their creation. We anticipate to get positive feedback after one school term, such as community support, and girls-led STEAM teams established.

For the second year, we will design improved programs that will fit girls and non-binary genders better given the feedback we get from the first year. Please note, we are addressing the issue of gender equity, which doesn't mean we will ignore gender difference. We would tailor our programs to account for gender difference. For example, boys might be more interested in building robots, while girls are more interested in building landscape. So we will add a module in the classroom that could teach girls how to design gardens. We hope the modification will boost girls interests in STEAM field so as to make them more involved in STEAM education. 

Once the new program is approved by girls and non-binary genders, we will share it with our collaborators so that they could run the same program in their districts. 

Hopefully at the end of fourth year, we should see increased girl participant in STEAM classes in areas more than Twin-city.

Then we will keep on challenging girls on subsequent STEAM activities so that they could keep pursuing their interests in the field. 

We will take the following measurements: 1) community survey for progress and feedback, 2) student participation in STEAM activities, and 3) number of girl-led Robotics Teams and STEAM activities during MakerSpace

Statistics show children tend to look to their parents, especially moms, for guidance or examples of lives. This might be because moms tend to spend more time with the children, and moms provide stronger social-emotional connection with kids. Therefore, a clear and strong presence of Moms in the STEAM field will be able to inspire children, especially girls, to pursue STEAM futures. 

We have 1 team leader, and 2-3 supportive community members in planning.

We started this solution at the end of 2022, with initial implementation in 2023 Spring. It is not a long time, but during this short period of time, we have benchmarked a lot progress and got prevalent support.

Yinghua Academy, a Chinese immersion chart school in Minneapolis, has been embracing diversity, equity and inclusion from the first day of its establishment. It has provided superb education to almost all the ethnic groups in Minnesota. And almost all the ethnic group has presentations in the government body of YACA, the non-profit community associate that work very close with our school to ensure quality education for all. 

When we design our STEAM MOMs solution, we know we have the ability to recruit talented Moms and Dads with all kinds of background due to our diverse community. So there will be representations from all ethnic groups in our program, and YACA will ensure it.

Our business model is a community-based volunteer network to provide age-appropriate educational activities. 

Since we are rooted in community, our major revenue would be charitable donations plus tuitions from enrichment class. 

For the enrichment class program, we charged a very affordable rate to make the STEAM activities accessible to almost every kid. We will continue to run enrichment class in this way so that it could be a win-win.