Parent Perspective: Why STEM Can’t Wait Until High School

When should parents start preparing their children for STEM opportunities and careers? Earlier than many of us think.

In this Parent Perspective episode of the Black Girls Do Engineer Podcast, Kara Branch responds to the conversation from “The STEM Gap Starts Early: What We’re Missing in K–8” and breaks down what early STEM exposure means from a parent’s point of view.

Kara challenges parents to stop waiting for children to say they’re interested in engineering, coding, robotics, AI, cybersecurity, or other STEM fields before introducing them to those experiences. Sometimes exposure has to come before interest.

She also discusses why parents should understand what STEM opportunities their child’s school actually provides, how to find outside resources when opportunities aren’t available at school, and why using technology isn’t the same as understanding or creating with technology.

Most importantly, parents don’t have to be engineers, scientists, or technology experts to raise STEM-ready children. You don’t have to be the expert—you can be the connector.

This episode ends with Kara’s Parent Homework: identify one STEM exposure gap in your child’s experience and find one opportunity to help fill it.

Because we’re not asking our children to choose their entire careers in elementary or middle school. We’re giving them enough exposure to discover what’s possible.

Parents, STEM can’t wait until high school—and we have homework too.

Transcript

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Welcome back to the Black Relic Engineer Podcast. I'm Cara Brian, chemical engineer and founder of CEO of Black Relic Engineer. And if you listen to my conversation with Shane Woods, the STEM gap starts early, what we're missing in K through eighth grade, you hear us talk about something that I think every parent needs to understand, that we just cannot wait into high school to start thinking about STEM. And I wanted to come back after that conversation, not as a founder of a STEM organization, not even as an engineer, but as parents. Because after we hear the educators and experts, I want us to be able to ask ourselves, okay, what does this mean for me? What are we supposed to do with this information? Because I don't want this podcast to become a place where we hear great conversations, say, wow, that was good, and then go right back to doing exactly what we were doing. I want us to take action. And here's where I want us to start today. Your baby does not have to know she wants to be an engineer before you expose her to engineering. She doesn't have to tell you she wants to become a computer scientist because you introduce her to coding. She doesn't have to be the best math student in her class before you even put her in robotics. And she definitely doesn't have to wait into high school because somebody starts showing her what STEM looks like. Parents, exposure is our homework too. So today, I want to give you the parents' perspective, right, on Shane's conversation and talk about what we can actually start doing. So let's get into it. So one of the things I get to hear a little bit more than I used to hear when I started in 2019 was my baby is doing robotics, coding, all those things, right? That's great. And I applaud my parents who are exposing your children very early because that's what I've been asking people to do for about eight years now. So I want us to stop waiting for your child to tell you she likes them. I think one of the biggest mistakes we can even make as a parent is waiting for our children to tell us what they're interested in before we expose them to it. Think about that. How can your child tell you she loves robotics if she never touched a robot? How can she even tell you like she's interested in cybersecurity if she doesn't even know what cybersecurity is? How can she say, Mom, I think I want to be a chemical engineer if nobody has ever explained what a chemical engineer does. Exposure has to come before interest sometimes. I have a lot of children who show up that don't have an interest in what's in front of them because they've simply never been exposed. But I those same children are the children that keep coming back time and time again. Because it's new to them. They were scared at first, but they fall in love with this stuff. And there's some children who are just not. Why? Because that is not of interest to them. Does that mean that they should not come back to the next one? No, because the next one for us is something different and something that they may actually fall in love with. I know as a parent, it is hard to get our children to do these things, right? If they don't have that interest. It's the hardest wake-up call in most households because a lot of these things I know for us happens early in the morning on a weekday, right? And as parents, it's already hard enough Monday through Friday to get our kids to school, to get our kids home, to cook dinner, to help with homework. There's a ton of things along with the things that we do as parents Monday through Friday. So that Saturday is sometimes the day we may want to rest. Sometimes there may be a family event, sometimes there may be a lot of things already on the calendar. But we have to put these STEM engagements as a priority. I say this time and time again. And I don't want this to become a situation where it's too late to expose our children to STEM. They're so far behind because we simply just did not do it when we were being told this. Okay. So we have to add this to the list. Does it have to be every month? No, it could be once every three months, right? Now that I can't tell you what happens when parents are putting their kids into these spaces. Your kids is asking you to go to this, so it becomes a priority, right? If it's done right. So I live and breathe all innovations in this world. And not every time I watch my children learn it correctly. I want to express that because I talk about this often how it's not done right. If we don't catch our children doing this right, being exposed to it right within that first five minutes, you can lose them. So I get it. There may be some parents out there who have tried it and it was not done right. Your kids didn't get that wow moment. It wasn't executed to its full capability. I get it. Does that mean that you don't give another organization or another club or whatever that may be a chance? No. You keep putting them in and until you see that it's done right. And we have to make this a party. I can't say that enough. I really used to let this keep me up at night because I have seen how fast technology moves and so many other things move. And I'm only one person, right? So I can't solve the word world challenges. But as a parent, I am so, so, so, so tired, like many other people, right? I'm a parent. There's three children who have so many different needs, right? So many different interests. And so it's a lot to do, all that they want to do, and add this to it. But I do it because I believe that their world will be this and they will grow up and be the leaders of this world. And what I can't afford to do for my children is just not let them know that this world exists. Stem as the Mic Buzzword, a lot of stuff is going on around STEM because we want, you know, people are making money off of this endeavor. I'm gonna be honest, be real. We're nonprofit, we get a lot of grants, right, to support us because we want to put that money back into our community. But it's everywhere now. You have to make sure that you do your research as parents, right? To make sure our kids is being exposed correctly and our money is going farther said it can't do go. Because we all know this economy is economy, okay? It's so win. And we cannot afford to waste money. So do your research, make sure, right? Make sure you're having conversations with your children, right? To even see if this is something you want to do. We have conversations with them about sports, dance, gymnastics, their music that they like, art that they create, right? I just had a conversation with my daughter just the other day about sports. Right? Those come normal in many households, those conversations, but ask them about what they know, and you'll be surprised what they may know about robotics. I love teaching cybersecurity with our programming because kids know a lot about it. Okay, kids dive into technology. This is their world. This may be uncomfortable to some of us as adults because you know we may have not grown up with this understanding of what these things are. We're just getting exposed to these technologies and emerging technologies and things like that ourselves. But take it at the time to learn from your children because they know a lot. And if you're not playing off that curiosity, we're not giving them the benefits to be great, right? So I say it time and time again. Your kids need to be doing some type of STEM training workshop with us at Black Girls to Engineer or wherever you see fit, but they need to be doing it. Right? We treat those normal conversations around dance, sports, basketball, right? Cheer, even piano lessons, which is great for critical thinking, right? Making sure they're exposed to those things. Right. We make sure they try it. I can't tell you how many things my kids have tried down the line of sports, and not saying they should not do it. I'm saying that they should do those things that they love and add this to it as another thing to be doing. They can do it all, right? So we want to make sure how we treat these things that we don't treat STEM any different. So our job as a parent really isn't to decide, you know, your child's STEM career in elementary school. I had someone ask me just the other day, my middle daughter's in sixth grade, and what does she want to be? And I said to them, I don't know at this moment, but I do know what she likes. And I do know the STEM things that she loved to do. And I do know that she's been playing basketball since she was a little baby, and I know all the things she loves. So I'm just gonna continue to keep her in those things and exposing her to as much as I can as possible, and then it will form into the career it should be, right? So it's not our job to say my dog, my daughter's gonna be this at two, right? But it is our job to expose them to and give them enough experiences to discover what they do as parents. I also want to talk about a STEM kit and how they don't have just one look. Another thing that Shane conversation made me think about is how early children start forming ideas about who belongs in STEM, right? And parents, we have to be careful that we aren't reinforcing those ideas ourselves. Your child does not have to be the highest performing math student, loves every science class, sit around building computers all day, okay? They don't have to fit whatever stereotype of what an engineer scientist looks like. I've spent my career in engineering, and one thing I need our girls to understand is that STEM needs all kinds of people. We need the creative child, we need the child who asks a million questions, we need the child talking about taking things apart, right? That's where engineering starts for most children. We need the artists, we need the athlete, we need those gamers. Okay, I always ask girls who's a gamer here. We need you. We need the girls who love fashion, we need the love girls who love things like K-pop, right? I see the guys have a daughter who loves K-pop. We need the girls who haven't figured out what she even loves yet. Don't eliminate your baby from STEM because she has an opportunity to discover herself in it, okay? There's no specific look of what a STEM kids look like. I tell people all the time, I come from an underserved community myself, single parent. My mom raised me. I did not go to, to be honest with you, transparent, like schools who had enough money to buy the books. And I really honestly taught myself high school by just whatever books we had, teaching myself to make sure that I learned because I'm a learner forever learner. And then that's a whole nother story for itself. Okay. I had a dream. I wanted to college and I had to do what I had to do. That was my dream from elementary school. So I did what I had to do, right? But I wasn't, yes, we had honors, we had AP. I tried all that, but I didn't really have the read resources to understand how impactful it was going to be. I was just kind of thrown into it because I was considered one of the smart students, right? Again, I didn't come from having all the means. And here I am, a chemical engineer today. I believe you can come from every walk of life and do it. Okay, it's up to you to do it. So there's no stereotypes on this, okay. Your kid, any kid can do this. I want parents to understand that. I tell my kids this all the time. You can have all these different loves. You are needed here. Okay, so parents, we have to make sure. Again, we throw it our kids and they understand everyone, all of them belong in STEM, no matter what their love is. All those things play a part in innovation, and so we want to make sure they're included. Okay, here's another thing, parents. So I do this quite often, and we talked about this in so many different ways in our conversation, but pay attention to what your school actually offers, okay. This is where you connect Shane's educator perspective, right? That we talked about, right, to really understanding what our school offers. So, and the way that we're gonna be able to do that to understand what actually is offered is we gotta ask those questions, okay? We talked about how we need parents, right, to be an ally to our educators, right? But as a parent, we just have to ask some questions. And so, from my perspective as a parent, I'm asking questions like does the school have science labs, right? We can't just assume that science labs have science labs, right? We need to know, right? And if they don't, and our kids love science, we need to understand how we can make these science labs. Like, I can't tell you every week right now, I'm trying to get my daughter to just fall in love with science. She is a huge techie and she loves math, but I I love science, so I'm trying to help her, right? Right now, we're doing cooking science labs at home. Okay, we talk about safety, we talk about the scientific method, right? As a parent, that's my responsibility to do that for her. And what's happening from it? She gets falling in love with science. So you have to take on some of those loads ourselves. We can't, as a parent, we cannot send our kids to school and say that's it. We have to make sure our kids are progressing as they should. Because I can tell you what will happen. If we don't, we're gonna pay for it down the line. Nine times out of ten, that's when they do get to high school. Okay, so we have to ask these questions. So if we do if they don't, we fill in a gap. Do my school have robotics? Some schools do not. That is a great question. And also, if they may not have robotics, ask them about the amazing robotics programs that's offered throughout many cities and see how your child can become a part of that. Does my school offer coding? Does they have an engineering class? Do they have computer science here? Is there an after-school STEM club? Do you have a makerspace? Does the community have one? What about career days? I get asked a ton of as an engineer to do these for schools. Kudos to the people who do these for their schools that are administrators and things like that, make sure this happens. But as a parent, we need to be asking these questions. Are my kids being exposed to career days? We keep hearing about merging technologies as parents and all this stuff around them. But are y'all, you know, offering us career days? Field experience. Can my child go and see? I know when we were in school, we had an amazing teacher. She came from New York. I went to school in Texas, and she had us do a career day. I will never forget that day when she and I was able to go to the Heartbalf place and do all this stuff when I was in middle school. So ask that. Can my child be exposed? We talked about so many programs, especially in high school, right? That they have. But I have done where so many career days for elementary and middle. Okay. So ask if it's happening at your children's school, them competitions. Schools get dropped off so many fires from organizations around the community. Okay. If anybody's in the know, majority of the time they are in the now. I know as a parent, sometimes I could just roll up to the school and see so many yard signs of so much happening, right? I read on the school prompters, their digital prompters in the front, what's going on. There's information they have. Most organizations go to the schools to get the word out of what's going on. So they may not have it, but there may be an organization they can refer you to that has it. Do they have technology beyond Chromebooks? Right? What else are they being exposed to? And if they don't have any of these things, our schools, that does not automatically mean you have a bad school. We talked about budget constraints and things like that. It's expensive. We talked about that, how expensive it is to have STEM equipment. Okay. That doesn't mean they're about school. I want to be clear about that. Schools are balancing a lot, teachers are caring a lot at this time. So there is a lot of opportunity for us to see what resources they have beyond the school's system, right? And understand that the school can be our partner, right? To make sure we're getting these things for our kids, but it cannot be our child's entire STEM ecosystem. So those resources are gonna play a huge part there. So we have to fill the gap, okay, as parents. So we also have to not confuse consumption with STEM learning. So don't confuse consumption, okay, with STEM learning. I have to say that again for the people in the back. So I want to talk about technology for a minute. Just because our children are good at using technology doesn't mean they understand technology. They can navigate that iCad, they can edit a video game. They can play games. They can use apps, right? They can probably teach us something about our phones, but ask, can you create with technology? And I ask my kids this all the time. What's going on behind that app? I run our babies moving from consumers to creators. I can't say this enough. I say this all the time. And my listeners know. We got to move them from consumers to creators. So don't just play the games. Ask how was the game coded? Don't just watch videos. Ask how does the algorithm decide what you're seeing? Don't just use AI. Ask them what is AI? How does it learn? Where does that data come from? What happens when the data is biased? That's where critical thinking starts. We want to make sure our children are critical thinkers. I can't tell you as a parent, I ask questions around here all day, every day. So we got to ask around. If they don't understand how games are coded, we'll set Nick's coding class at. If we're parents, who knows how to code? I mean so many amazing parents who are stem professionals like me, some who aren't, that just learn how to code. And we gotta make that time, that our time within our daily day to day. I know we're busy as parents. I know. But we have to make the time to sit down with our babies and make sure they know how to code. Okay. Everyone needs to know how to code, and that can be an episode, just for itself. Another big thing we talked about in our episode with Shane, and which is probably one of our biggest technical takeaways from that episode, is don't wait until she's 16. Clearance, you know, please don't wait. Don't wait until high school course selection, those SAT, ACT preparations, college applications, scholarship seasons. A college major has to be selected. By the time we're asking a 17-year-old, do you want to major in engineering? I want her to have some idea of what engineering actually is. I want her to know how to have to build something or have built it. I want that 17-year-old to have already coded something. They already have met an engineer, visited a company, right? To see what that looks like to work as an engineer in someone's company, to have solved the engineering challenge. Failed at something, but rebuilt it. You know, ask questions, explore. That is what K through eighth grade is really for. Okay, we need to make sure our children have already done it before they even reach high school. And that was one of our biggest takeaways from the conversation with Shane. We're not asking them to choose their whole life, right? But we're helping them discover what's possible, and that needs to be done in K through eighth grade. So I just wanted to get my perspective as a parent. I say this all the time. People know me from our podcast for sure. A chemical engineer, the founder and CEO of Black Hiroshimo Engineer. But I'm a parent of three daughters myself. And people, you know, who sees me on a day-to-day doing this work, they see my children or giving back to the children in the community, right? Because that's what I trained them up to be to not just learn it, but to also teach people what they're learning. Because it's our heart to do this for our community. And so they are they're out there doing it. But they have been doing this since before kinder. We focus heavily on K through 12th grade, but you don't have to start in Kinder. My youngest daughter started doing this at two years old because she will watch what we did with older girls, and that really inspired her. And so I just want people to know that you can start the sooner the better, right? To expose your children to this. They're ready. If you ask me yourself, are they ready? I'm here to tell you they're ready. This is their world, they're the leaders of the future. And parents, you see it. I see it all the time. It's stuff that I just state out loud in a sentence, and my kids are able to define it because they have researched it or seen a video about it. I know my parents have had those experiences as well. So they are ready, if you're asking yourself. So I have some homework for us parents. Okay. We are in our back to school series. So homework for us too. Ask your child one question is my first homework excitement. That question can be as simple as this What is something you've always wanted to learn how to build, create, or understand? Don't correct the answer. Our job as parents, we're just going to listen. Again, that question is what is something you've always wanted to learn how to build, create, or understand? My second question for homework is find out what STEM opportunities your child school actually offers. And what we're gonna do as parents, we're gonna email the teacher, a counselor, STEM coordinator. We have some STEM coordinators at school. Your school has a STEM coordinator that is the person you most definitely need to get to know. Or ask our amazing administrators if you don't know how, right? Just if you're not comfortable with doing the email method, maybe it's just a day you drop them off at school, go into the office and ask these questions. See what resources have been dropped out, but find out what's the opportunities your child school offers already. And our third assignment is identify just one gap. Maybe your child hasn't experienced coding, robotics, engineering, AI, cybersecurity, anything around aviation, anything around biotechnology, haven't done anything around energy, whatever it is, pick one. Just identify just one of those gaps. We don't need 10. You don't have to write a full-page essay on what you're gonna do. You just need to find one opportunity. If you have been to a Black Girls Do Engineering or you're interested in one, just go to our website, blackgirlsdoengineer.org. We have a lot of great things that your children can attend to fill those gaps, variety of many of the things I just mentioned. But you just need to find just one opportunity. That's it. We are not overwhelming ourselves. I already told you our Monday through Fridays is packed, those Saturdays and Sundays is packed too. But this is something we have to do. This is not an option anymore. This is has to be done for our children and even ourselves. I tell myself this as a parent all the time. Keep myself scaled up so that I can make sure my children are great in this area as well. So not overwhelming yourself. One child, one gap, one opportunity. That's it. That's the fourth and final assignment. So if you have not listened to my app my episode with Shane that was released last week, check it out to hear our conversation, right? So you can get a lot more gems outside of my parent perspective. This is just my parent perspective. I want to make sure as parents that we know what we must do as well to help guide us, right? It's not our fault. We don't know, we don't know. But the goal is that when we do find out a new piece of information or something that can be helpful to us and our children, that we ask those questions. So just also note that can't say it enough. This is something that needs to be done. We don't want us to be left behind. To the honest truth, we are already far behind, but we don't want to be left out the equation at all. So let's just do what we know how to do parents. So parent shane episode reminded us that the STEM gap started early. But here's what I want us to remember that also means we have an opportunity to intervene early. So we don't have to wait until our babies are applying to college to realize they haven't been exposed. We can start now at six, at eight, at 10, at 12. And we don't have to have everything figured out. We just have to be intentional. Teachers have that role, right? Schools have a role, organizations like Black Girls Do Engineer have a role, industry has a role, and parents, we have homework too. Our job isn't to decide exactly who our children will become. Our job is to make sure their world is big enough for them to discover who they can become. So expose your baby, ask questions, pay attention to what sparks her curiosity, find the resources, build the village. And don't wait until high school because the future isn't waiting on our babies. We need to make sure our babies are ready for the future. I'm Cara Branch, and this has been Parent Perspective on the Black Girls to Engineer podcast. I will see you next episode. To learn more about Black Girls to Engineer, visit our website page at Blackgirls2engineer.org or email us directly at info at blackgirls to engineer.org.