A colleague of mine in KSTF, Laura Wang created an amazing STEM lesson plan to use on this day, with tons of ideas to spark conversations in STEM classes. I decided to try out some of it in my Chemistry and AP Chemistry classes today. While a lot of the conversation was productive, I also faced some challenges I wasn't expecting.
My hope going into the lesson was to illuminate a few key facts (using data):
- Girls take as many science and math classes in high school as boys. This suggests that girls are at least as interested in math and science as boys.
- Girls have higher GPAs in math and science than boys in high school. I also wanted to suggest that one reason why this might be is because teachers may be more likely to offer help to female students and males may also be less likely ask for or accept help from teachers.
- Boys outperform girls on AP science and math tests. I was hoping to tie this into the stereotype threat talked about in the article.
- Girls are less likely to obtain degrees in STEM fields, especially in engineering.
I tried to make it clear to students that any gender disparities (in any subject, favoring boys or girls) were worth talking about, but that we were focusing on girls because of the day and on STEM because of the subject of our class. While I was able to have these conversations without problems in a few classes (other than the occasional "This is stupid, I don't want to do this"), one class had a particularly negative response.
I started the lesson by explaining the Unity Principles from the Women's March and how that related to the Day Without a Woman movement, and I think this is where a few students stopped listening and started forming their own conclusions about the rest of the lesson. Because I had mentioned a march/protest, I must be a hyper-feminist who wants women to take over the STEM workforce and push all men out. I have to assume this is what one student inferred, because at the point when I had only given them the data and asked what the graphs showed, he refused to answer the questions and said, "This goes against everything I believe in."
What?
You can't "believe in" data. We hadn't even begun to interpret the data. I asked the student to expand on what he meant, but he wouldn't (or couldn't).
As we started to brainstorm possible reasons for the gaps, other students unleashed frustrating remarks as well. "Women have less degrees because they want to be stay-at-home moms." This statement itself is not inherently a problem. Being a stay-at-home mom is an extremely admirable job and certainly this is why some women don't get degrees in STEM. When I explained that factor alone didn't account for the entire gap, students still insisted they couldn't suggest possible solutions without having that graph "fixed" to exclude stay-at-home moms. I wasn't sure where to go from there. Students started having their own side conversations. One student remarked that the graphs didn't account for other genders...a great point, but I'm certain it was only brought up to try to derail the conversation. Another student said we shouldn't even be talking about this in school because it is too political.
Again, what?
I still asked that class to take the article home and discuss is with an adult woman in their life for homework. I am hopeful that discussion will help illuminate for those students why this issue is important. I am worried, though, that some of the comments I heard today represent a larger problem society is facing regarding the tendency of those with privilege to lash out when others try to push for equity.
I'd be interested to hear others' responses in the comments.
