Middle-school boys clamor to investigate how things work. Girls
present a tougher challenge
By Betsy Avelar Staff Writer
Gilroy – Adriana Rubio doesn’t really like making things with her hands – mirroring a study that indicates young middle-school-age Hispanic girls are less likely to be interested in science.
But 11-year-old Adriana is exactly the kind of student that backers of a new tech program hope to reach.
A $26,000 “Get Tech @ the Library” grant was awarded to the Santa Clara Library to focus on middle-school Hispanics and girls under-represented in science fields. The program, which will be offered at the Gilroy Library, is a collaboration between the Santa Clara County Library and the Tech Museum of Innovation. It was funded in part by a grant from the California State Library System.
Rubio, a student at Ascension Solorsano Middle School in Gilroy, represents the challenge facing the program.
“I don’t like making things. I like to hang out with my friends,” said Rubio. Her brother Max, 14, said the opposite.
“It seems like fun to know how to build different things,” he said when asked if he would attend a workshop on how to build roller coasters – a workshop that was offered in October at the Gilroy Library. “I would do it just for the experience and to meet new people.”
Kelly Young, adult and teen services librarian at the Gilroy library, said there were 10 people at the roller-coaster making workshop. None of the participants were girls.
“Basically I’ve been advertising in every newspaper and putting flyers up and trying to go to our captive audience and personally inviting them to go,” said Young. “The actual goal of the grant was to encourage seventh- and eighth-graders, focusing on Hispanics and females, lacking in the scientific field.”
The Tech Museum provided training for two of the Gilroy library staff members to organize two of the challenges included in the program. One was a hands-on program on physics. The participants were able to demonstrate the laws of physics as it relates to roller coasters by using household materials. Participants created their own crude demo of roller coasters.
Each month has a certain theme – such as germs, earthquakes and genetics. Also each month there are ongoing scavenger hunts aimed at enticing youth into the libraries and getting them to use scientific databases to help improve their research skills. All the entries of the scavenger hunt are put into a drawing.
Santa Clara County Library grant writer Emily Reich Shem-Tov calls the program “bringing a piece of the Tech Museum to our local library.”
“I actually wrote it for a class because I have been involved with the Tech Museum for many years,” she said.
Shem-Tov attended library school and was looking to foster collaboration with organizations such as the Tech Museum. She took a grant writing class and talked to people in the Tech Museum as well as the libraries.
“It’s just so exciting to see two great community resources reach so many more people together,” Shem-Tov said.
Adriana didn’t attend the most recent workshop, but all hope is not lost. She has an opportunity to attend another one in February that consists of an activity with magnets.
“If my friends were to go, I would go because I would have someone to talk to,” said Adriana.
