By Cheryl Stewart | PR Chair
Given the overwhelmingly passionate response from the students we visited on their schools’ Career Days last time and our own excitement, it’s no surprise that we continued to connect Jamaican youth with established scientists. Our road trips this time took us to St. Andrew’s High School for Girls and Oberlin High School.
At Andrew’s (as it’s affectionately called) we were given the opportunity to address two different grade nine groups. Dr. David Picking was up first, with a group of 20 young ladies. Based on the questionnaires they filled out, Dr. Picking was able to make 80% of them more excited about science and all of them confessed to learning from their interaction with him. Dr. Benkebler spoke with 40 young ladies. Many of them were more excited about science and 80% told us they learned from his talk.
We then headed into rural St. Andrew to spend some time with 70 grade nine students from Oberlin High. Prof. Paul Reese led the discussion and the students loved spending time with him. In fact, 100% of them reported being more excited about science and 100% said they learned from his talk.
Our foray into Jamaica’s high schools is SoSA's newest activity. Why did we do it? Based on our own experiences, we realised our younger selves would have really appreciated having local scientists help us answer questions about our potential future path. It’s a tense period – everyone is expecting you to make choices about what subjects to study. What if you pick the wrong ones? What if you want to change your mind? What does it mean to be a scientist anyway? And who better to answer those questions than people who had also had them before – us? We are excited to help youth answer these questions. We are grateful to be given the opportunity to volunteer by these high schools. We are thankful for our volunteer speakers. And we are beyond thankful that you choose to invest in us so we can invest in them. Stay tuned for more S.T.E.P.S. and look out for our Each One Reach One Campaign!
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