HADIYAH QURESHI


MY STEM CLUB



10/05/2019



In November 2017, I came up with the idea of a club (that was not limited to just girls!) that showcased notable women in STEM in all kinds of fields, along with explanations of the applications of their research. I organised and led it with two amazing young women in STEM, Amblessed and Shazmen. We spent a lot of time planning each lesson, especially planning the experiments!



women in stem role models



I followed the Stemillions session plans - and I loved them! I had a feedback session with my girls, and they loved the plans, but they wanted more experiments!


I kept the parts about the meal plans they liked: hearing about the women in STEM role models. My girls said they wanted to learn more about refraction, so I asked one person to research and find a role model and I would use it to plan the session.


We have a journal that we document each session in. After each session, I gave it to a different girl and she wrote about the session. This was the CEO of Refraction Media's spread in our journal!



EXPERIMENTS galore



As a mathematician, conducting scientific experiments wasn't exactly my forte. I tried to find simple experiments, which made it a learning experience for both me and the girls!


Making a DIY speaker was definitely my favourite experiment. The speaker ended up working! Not as well as we thought, but if you put your ear right next to it you could hear a faint sound of music.


Building the speaker from scratch really made me feel like a scientist, and the girls said it did too!



ACHIEVING OUR GOALS



Although the main focus of the club was to develop the girls' interest in STEM and inspire them to pursue a career within STEM, I also wanted to help develop them as people. When I was growing up, what I really lacked was a positive, older influence that could guide and advise me on achieving my goals. So I had a session on exactly that! Check out the picture to see one of the girls' steps to achieving her goals.



Learning from our mistakes



I wanted to try something new and teach the girls that it's okay to make mistakes. Usually, I can be a little overbearing and watchful over their activities, but I let them try to make their own marshmallow bridge. We reflected on the bridge at the end, and they came to the conclusion that the structure was too top-heavy and the base wasn't strong enough.


The following session, we made new bridges, remembering what we learnt last time. They learnt that it's okay to make mistakes and it's even better to learn from them!



I hope that the girls will be amazing women in STEM one day, but I think they've taught me a lot more. I loved every minute with them and it was so lovely seeing the community I had built in the room. They were always my favourite part of the week and it reminded me how easy it is to pay it forward.