Working with Science Corps fellow Patti Murphy, these 3rd grade students used microscopes to take a look at salt up close.
Over the course of Patti's time at The American School of Tangier (AST) in Morocco, she got involved with the school and community in many ways. Here she shares her time working with girls in Girl Up to get them more involved in science.
Starting a Science Club with a Girl Up Theme
A group of Patti's amazing teacher colleagues at AST started a chapter of an international club called Girl Up for grades 7–12. The goal of the club is to promote girls as leaders by developing their skills and protecting their rights. They roped Patti in because the group had been informally discussing ways to elevate more Moroccan girls into leadership roles at the school for many weeks.
The decision to exclude girls in younger grades was tough, but the group decided to start the club with older girls who could then design their own activities for their younger counterparts. Patti wanted to make a dedicated space for even younger girls to participate, so she started a science club for grades 2–4 with a Girl Up theme. The idea was to learn about awesome science through hands-on activities, then use the science as a lens to focus on gender — for example, by learning about female scientists or gender issues related to the scientific topic. Nine of the smartest and most thoughtful little girls signed up: three 2nd graders, two 3rd graders, and four 4th graders.
A Close-Up Look Under the Microscope
The first science activity was centered around microscopes. Patti asked each of the girls to bring in an object they wanted to see under the scope. Before getting started, the group learned some basic rules and briefly discussed how microscopes make things bigger. Patti had already taught both second grade classes about lenses and how some can bend light to make things appear closer — and bigger — so they were ready to help explain the mechanism to their 3rd and 4th grade friends.
Then Patti set the girls loose to look at their objects under the scopes. Working in pairs, they got a close-up look at table salt, leaves, hair, gummy snacks, and flower petals. One of the girls even brought prepared slides from home — the most interesting of which was a housefly wing. All of the girls took turns looking and sharing their excitement over the wing's tiny blood vessels, which you could make out under the microscope but were virtually invisible to the naked eye.
Talking About Perspective
But the point of the activity was not the magnified samples or the microscopes, let alone how they work. Patti's real agenda was to discuss perspective — she wanted the girls to understand that how you look greatly affects what you see. To drive this home, she made a worksheet. First, the girls drew their sample based on what they could see with the naked eye. Then, before they were allowed to look under the microscope, they made a hypothesis: what did they think their sample would look like under magnification? Finally, after taking a look, they drew what they really saw. Everyone quickly realized that things looked quite different than expected.
From Microscopes to Hidden Figures
The group segued from this into a conversation about how just because you don't see something, that doesn't mean it's not there — it could mean you're not looking in the right place or in the right way. Patti next asked the girls about female scientists. Did they exist? How could they be sure? What if they don't see them? What are the possibilities? "They're hiding!" one of the girls said. This was Patti's opening.
They talked about hidden figures — how throughout history, female scientists often contributed to huge discoveries, but their recognition, if any, was buried in the Acknowledgements section of seminal papers. They talked about what it means to be an author of a scientific paper and how important it is to recognize everyone on a team for their hard work. The girls tolerated this for a full 10 minutes before they politely asked if they could go back to looking at their samples under the microscopes. Of course, Patti said yes.
Why It Matters
One thing that kids understand well is fairness. They can easily see that it is unfair to give less recognition to a person's work just because of their gender. Patti didn't learn about hidden figures until graduate school. She was lucky that not knowing didn't deter her from trying to become a scientist, but learning when she did made her look around and wonder whether some hidden version of the same thing might affect her.
There is still widespread gender disparity in scientific publishing, both in terms of the number of papers published and in how often those papers are cited. There are important ongoing efforts to address this and other related issues at the university level, but it is equally important to have open discussions with K–12 students about gender equality in science, even if only for 10 minutes at a time. The sooner and more often we tell them about instances of injustice in science, the more likely they will be to mitigate these issues when they grow up to become scientists.
Want to try out this activity with your own students? Contact us for the lesson plan!