STEM Talks! Interview a Scientist

The purpose of STEM Talks! is to give high school students the opportunity to talk to scientists about their career and/or how their job is related to math and science. In STEM Talks!, a local scientist(s) from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory(LBNL) virtually visits the classroom through LBNL’s free K-12 programs “Career Chats” and “Subject Exploration”. Teachers from all over the country can sign up for these talks on the LBNL website linked here. In STEM Talks!, a scientist from LBNL virtually visits the classroom to have students ask questions and learn about STEM careers through Berkeley’s aforementioned programs. In STEM Talks! students will brainstorm and create interview questions to ask the scientists. In STEM Talks! students develop their skills in communication, collaboration, and building connections between classroom subject matter to real-life contexts. Students in low-socioeconomic communities and People of Color do not often get exposed to and/or make connections with STEM jobs, even in diverse places like the SF Bay Area--an area well known for Nobel-prize-winning scientific discoveries and teeming with lucrative STEM jobs. According to the 2014-2016 Pew Research Center analysis of American Community Survey, Black folks and Latinos make up only 16% of STEM workers in the United States. As someone who teaches math in a high school that is 96% Black and Latino, I am painfully conscious of the racial segregation that exists in STEM careers in our nation. By starting STEM Talks!, I hope to give students the exposure and opportunities to STEM jobs that are right here in our area, literally 11 miles away from their homes. As a curriculum developer for LBNL this summer, I have already met so many young researchers and scientists who initially got interested in STEM jobs through LBNL’s K-12 programs and internships, and I want to bring these connections to my students as well.