Cool Science - Hannah Zhang
Lesson Recap with Kahoot
Hannah is a student at Gunn High School who founded Cool Science (previously known as Compuyouth), a free after-school STEM program for Students in East Palo Alto.
It all started with her interest in STEM from the Functional and Object Oriented Programming class at school. After experiencing the joy that came with problem solving, she decided that she wanted to share her knowledge with others.
However, the more research she did, the more she found about the lack of women and minorities entering the STEM industry. Yet in the 21st century, this field was only getting more and more important. This is when she decided she would create a program to introduce underrepresented children in East Palo Alto to STEM.
Feedback Surveys
Hannah started off in the empathize stage, where she sought to better understand what it was like working with students as well as solutions currently being implemented. She interviewed Kevin Rouse, head of PAUSD summer school, and Ariel Traver, the founder of CS Jumpstart. She then volunteered at Code for Fun, a technology summer camp, in order to learn firsthand how to work with kids. Lastly, she administered surveys to students grades 1-5 to gather feedback on what students wanted to learn.
With new knowledge, Hannah began to create a curriculum for her classes. She began first with introductions to common STEM fields but eventually began to delve deeper into concepts like geometry, engineering, and programming. Each class had several hands-on activities and covered topics that students had previously expressed interest in.
Team Activities
Her class officially began in September of 2019. Every Friday after school, Hannah would go to Costaño Elementary School in East Palo Alto and teach an hour-long course to the students. Although they were initially confused, Hannah was able to change her lessons plans to suit their needs, and they quickly began to catch on and excitement continued to grow.
In the future, Hannah hopes that others can take her reusable curriculum to their communities and spread the joy of learning STEM. Ultimately, she hopes that more and more historically underrepresented groups can enter the field of STEM. See more about her project here.