Today’s guest: Neil Thompson, engineer, author and ‘teacher of geeks’

Guest bio: Neil Thompson is an entrepreneur, children’s book author, and patent agent. For years, he worked as a product development engineer in the medical device industry. He started the online platform Teach the Geek to help scientists and engineers with non-technical skills that often get overlooked. His first target? Public speaking. The first offering of the platform, Teach the Geek to Speak, is the online course to help with public speaking.

His children’s book, Ask Uncle Neil: Why is my hair curly? is about his nephew asking him why his hair is the way it is and Neil uses science to answer the question. The goal of the book is to encourage more Black kids to consider careers in STEM.

Show notes: In this episode, Neil and Linda talk about the importance of parents as STEM gatekeepers. Neil points out ways that parents can recognize and foster a child’s natural curiosity about science and the world around them.

Neil shares insights in an article in eSchool News. It’s entitled “Surefire Ways to make Science Relevant to Students. Check it out here: https://www.eschoolnews.com/steam/2024/10/02/surefire-way-make-science-relevant-to-students/

What do you think? Drop your comments below.

Purchase Neil Thompson’s book at AskUncleNeil.com. The site has testimonials from other parents. And it’s geared toward elementary school ages and has a STEM message. It would make a great gift.

Also, you can check out the Teach the Geek Podcast on several outlets online. Subscribe and rate on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and YouTube Follow @teachthegeek and @_teachthegeek on IG

Visit the Teach the Geek website today.

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Show Sponsor:

STEM Dreams podcast is sponsored by Wildlands Engineering, a water resources engineering firm in Charlotte, North Carolina. Wildlands is dedicated to increasing diversity in engineering and environmental sciences like geology and ecology.

Wildlands, thank you for helping us help the next generation of STEM dreamers.

After they’ve done their lessons (thank God for school activities!), they come to you with the age-old complaint: I’M BORED.

STEM-based fun to the rescue!

Activities based in science, technology, engineering, and math principles don’t have to be “hard” and they don’t have to be expensive. Even if STEM subjects were not your favorite in school, you can be a STEM parent. Trust me, with a little preparation, you can.

What to do:

• Make up your mind to do at least one age-appropriate STEM activity or project a week. Remember, this doesn’t have to cost a lot (ideas below)
• Gather or order the supplies in one place. This can be a cardboard box, designated kitchen drawer or cabinet, or corner of your garage or closet.
• Showcase your results on social media (Use the #STEMDreams hashtag if you do)

Your goal with at-home STEM projects isn’t formal teaching. No, you will not be a STEM specialist by any stretch. Your goal is exploration together, fostering curiosity, and having fun. Resist the urge to take the hands-off approach to at-home STEM stuff. By doing at least some of the STEM activities together, you’re sending a powerful message to your child: You are worth my time and so is STEM.

Here are a few ideas to get you started with your STEM quarantine plan:

• Do a virtual tour. Many museums, zoos, National Parks, and tourist destinations have created online 3D tours of their venues. Check out this tour page from one of my favorite Smithsonian museums.
• Play a STEM Bingo game. I found this one by Googling “STEM Bingo kids”. Enjoy!
• Go fishing. Have your kids measure the fish and make a colorful bar chart of your haul. Didn’t catch anything? Try again next week.
• Bake some cookies from scratch. Make sure you let the kids do all the measuring.
• Watch a different STEM-ish Youtube video each night before bed. How It’s Made has a great series. So does Ted Ed. Keep a weekly log of what you watched and lessons learned.

How have you enjoyed STEM at home with your kids? Share in the comments below.

Oh yeah, when you get a minute, listen to our podcast series. Have you downloaded the STEM Dreams Parent Guide yet?

Pi in STEM Dreams vernacular stands for Parental Involvement. We created the STEM “Pi Guide” for parents who want to guide their students along the STEM pipeline but aren’t sure how.

Every kid can benefit from exposure to STEM subjects. And every parent can become more involved as a STEM gatekeeper. Yes, even those parents who were scared of science, technology, engineering and math as a kid.

Try our guide. It’s short and concise. And it’s FREE. Get your guide today.

Photo credit: Image by 445693 from Pixabay

Why is this? It could be because women (read: girls) bring a unique leadership skill set. In other words, they usually approach leadership differently than most males. They can be STEM workplace game changers because of their innate abilities.

Here’s the type of leadership qualities women and girls and bring to the STEM workplace:

• Emotional intelligence (EI): empathy and sympathy are soft skills that tends to be lacking in a male dominated work setting. Even big companies like Google have determined they need employees with high EI to succeed.
• Communication skills: most women are good communicators. Science has proven this again and again. Studies have shown that the hearing ability of infant girls are infinitely better than infant boys. They are born listeners, literally, and continue to develop their skills of listening at a faster rate. This inborn skills puts them ahead of their male peers in the communication department.
• Mentorship mentality: being a good mentor calls for a high EI, it requires communication, and a bent toward nurturing. Leaders who act more like mentors rather than unreachable dictators have better teams. This is what studies show again and again.

When I (Linda) taught in project-based settings in academia, I made a point of making sure all the girls were not on the same team. I knew that young men could make great leaders too but I also realized that diversity in leadership strengthened the team dynamic. I encouraged all team members to share responsibility for taking notes, being the team captain, etc. And reminded them that a person’s gender did not define their role.

Each person comes with taught and ‘caught’ skills. Sometimes girls need to be reminded that they have value on a team. Challenge the girls in your life to see their tendency toward empathy and relationship-building as a strength. Did this article address some of your stereotypes about women and girls in STEM leadership? Leave a comment.

We are naturally drawn toward comfort. There’s nothing wrong with that. A body needs a warm, dry, safe place to live. 

In fact, this goes along with a diagram that a researcher named Abraham Maslov developed in the 1940s. It was part of his theory of human motivation. It has become known as Maslov’s Hierarchy of Needs. It’s a five-tier pyramid of human needs. 

The base (foundation) of the pyramid is our psychological and needs for food, water, rest, security, and safety. These ‘comforts’ motivate us. Once we realize the ‘comfort’ from having all (or most) of these needs met, we can then start to reach for some of the others like the needs for love, supporting community, and personal accomplishment. 

Let’s be honest. Pursuing Maslov’s top level needs can be risky. We’re pulled out of our comfort zone big time when we try something like taking a robotics class or  learning to program a 3D printer for the first time. Do you take action toward the ‘unknown’? Or do you stay in the comfort zone?

STEM DREAMS CHALLENGE: What if getting out of your comfort zone is the key to realizing your STEM dream?

So how about you? What happened when you overcame your fear?

In this short video, Yo-Yo Ma talks about what happens when two “ecosystems” meet. In that juncture of diversity, new things come about. Innovation becomes the norm.  Going beyond the the same old activities to a place where seemingly dissimilar things meet, new things can exist.

Yo-Yo Ma applies this ecological concept to the creative world to form the Silk Road collective of musicians and artists. I think this concept can be used in STEM fields to achieve results we haven’t seen yet. In some circles the temptation is to self-segregate along gender, social-economic, or racial lines. When I taught introductory engineering classes and directed a peer mentoring program for a four-year university, I purposefully created diverse teams of students for project work and peer-to-peer support. The results, though sometimes slow, were always good for everyone involved.

STEM DREAMS CHALLENGE: If your STEM groups and teams are homogeneous, pull in some diversity and see what happens.

What do you think? Have you the Edge Effect at work in STEM environments?