FREE STEM Program for Middle School Boys (Deadline 9/15)

SMASH prep has the express goal of increasing the pipeline of viable Bay Area African American males for SMASH Academy and other STEM preparatory programs. It’s curriculum, designed for 6th – 9th graders, will increase the participants college and STEM aspirations by improving math and science content knowledge and skills while developing scholars’ critical thinking skills. It is a rigorous program that will expose scholars to competencies that are one year in advance of their grade level.

How To Apply

Deadline – September 15th by 9pm (SMP Flyer 2014)
Complete Application: Student App, Parent Questionnaire, Two letters of recommendation, transcripts and CST scores.
Email Application: milan@lpfi.org
Ideal Candidates will be invited to Interview!!

Powerful Ad Shows What A Little Girl Hears When You Tell Her She’s Pretty

PAASSC will continue to highlight the benefits of encouraging youth to increase their love and interaction with STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art & Math). This advertisement by Verizon highlights an example of ways we can better encourage our children to explore STEAM – by not creating barriers.

Reposted from Huffington Post:

A new Verizon commercial cites a sad statistic by the National Science Foundation: 66 percent of 4th grade girls say they like science and math, but only 18 percent of all college engineering majors are female.

People have offered many potential explanations for this discrepancy, but this ad highlights the importance of the social cues that push girls away from math and science in their earliest childhood years.

The video depicts one girl’s development from toddler to teenager. She wanders curiously through nature, examines the plants and animals around her, creates an astronomy project, and builds a rocket with her older brother. But all along the way, she hears many all-too-common refrains from her parents: “Who’s my pretty girl?” “Don’t get your dress dirty,” “You don’t want to mess with that,” and “Be careful with that. Why don’t you hand that to your brother?” These statements are subtle, but the ad suggests that they can ultimately discourage girls from pursuing traditionally male-dominated STEM subjects in school.

According to AdWeek, the powerful commercial is the result of a partnership between Verizon and Makers and is narrated by Girls Who Code founder, Reshma Saujani.

The video ends with a thought-provoking question: Isn’t it time we told her she’s pretty brilliant, too?

Original Link @ Huffington Post

Support Black Male Achievement – View American Promise!!

What can you do to support Black Male Achievement?

Request that your school administrator include this video in their Professional Development trainings!

Schedule a time to watch this video with parents, friends and colleagues.

There are also great resources available on the American Promise website.
Great resources available below.

We continue to encourage school administrators to utilize American Promise as a Professional Development tool. PBS is now offering free streaming video of this incredible film until March 6, 2014.
Teaching Tolerance designed the accompanying professional development series to help school faculty become more aware of the ways schools do and don’t work well for African-American male students. Each module uses selections from the film to facilitate discussion among instructors about the kinds of practices and pedagogical approaches that are effective.
Farmers Insurance is also making a number of great tools available to teachers for free or at a reduced rate.

My Black Girls Code!!

We hired a Mandarin speaking tutor to teach our girls code. Today was their first day and it was an incredible experience. The girls were giggling, engaged and really enjoyed the curriculum offered by code.org. The tutor also seemed to really enjoy the girls’ enthusiasm. She even stayed over her time to help my little one with her final project.

Some people ask – “What’s code?”

Last month I posted about the youngest person ever to develop code. Reading about young Zora Ball re-energized me around the importance of STEM (Science Technology, Engineering and Math) activities for my children. In my push to encourage more Black families to aggressively pursue a STEM filled summer I became aware of several obstacles for my family – cost, expense and price. I found a robotics class and IDTech Camps that started at $839/week. Even when I thought that maybe I could justify the expense I had to remember that I have two children. Plus there was the added concern of paying so much for them to learn robotics or programming one week during the summer without any follow up until I tried it again next summer. That seemed absurd.

I went on line and remained committed on finding the RIGHT STEM program for my girls. There are a ton of resources out there with after school, weekend and summer programs. The bulk of the programs are geared towards middle and high school students. Some programs provide free or low-cost services to low-income families and some week long summer programs cost approximately $850/week. I decided that I definitely needed to think outside the box.

Stepping out of the box I first noticed that while there are very few classes and workshops for kids as young as my daughters there are a lot of great software programs out there designed to get kids as young as 5 years old interested in code. With everything on my plate right now I know that teaching my kids code is NOT a task that I am up for. So I decided to hire a tutor. Then it just seemed to make sense that I search for a Mandarin speaking tutor. My children have never learned code so if they start in Mandarin their ability to code will progress right along with their Mandarin language learning.

I decided that this might be a great opportunity to link with a Mandarin tutor. I searched Instaedu.org for a tutor and found eight possible matches for Mandarin speaking tutors majoring in computer science. I selected a Mandarin speaking tutor that is pre-med because the beginning software available on code.org is so simple it practically runs itself and she was just more engaged and excited about spending time with my children than the other available tutors.

This morning they had their first lesson.

My youngest daughter is less likely to maintain a non-school-led conversation in Chinese. But after watching her sister she seemed to understand right away – code is a Mandarin activity. She laughed and coded in Mandarin while making “explosion” sounds when her bird hit the dynamite. Even I had to giggle watching her (as I folded four loads of laundry).

I was surprised how much they enjoyed it! Our instructor will meet the girls at our home Sunday mornings before church (giving me time to clean up around the house and prepare to get out the door). It’s a great way to spread the cost of $850 over an extended period of time so that my girls are actually able to enjoy and process what they are learning. This is a very exciting adventure for us!

Youngest Person to Develop Mobile Game App!!!

At 7 years old, Zora Ball has become the youngest person to create a mobile video game.

The app was unveiled at the FATE Bootstrap Expo, held at the University of Pennsylvania last month.

Ball developed the game using programming language Bootstrap, which is usually taught to students between the ages of 12 and 16, to help them learn concepts of algebra via video game development.

According to Mashable, Ball also successfully reconfigured the app when asked to do so at the Expo, silencing anyone who may have thought that her older brother — a STEM scholar of the year — helped her program the game.

Staff at Harambee Institute of Science and Technology, where Ball attends first grade and an after-school program, anticipate she’ll do great things, the Philadelphia Tribune reported.

“I am proud of all my students,” Tariq Al-Nasir, who heads the STEMnasium Learning Academy, told the told the Tribune’s Damon Williams. “Their dedication to this program is phenomenal, and they come to class every Saturday, including holiday breaks.”

Last year, the Huffington Post wrote about Kelvin Doe, a 13-year-old from Sierra Leone who created batteries and generators using materials he picked up around the house. Three years later, he became the youngest person to be invited to MIT’s Visiting Practitioner’s Program.

Finding Balance for my Black girls in a Chinese Heritage Program!

One of the many things that I have enjoyed about my daugthers’ participation in a Chinese Immersion program has been the strong heritage component. It’s hard to have your child in a Chinese Immersion program in San Francisco and not be immersed in the culture and folklore of Chinese traditions. Our school barely celebrates Valentine’s Day in February due to their focus on Chinese New Year so there is no celebration of Black History Month at all. We have really embraced and enjoy our daughters having exposure to Chinese culture and on our own have tried to add in spoonfuls of Black history here and there. But our school does not provide our girls with enough around their culture and history. I knew that going in and that was one of the reasons that I started PAASSC. But I did not major in African studies and I am not well versed in African History so that component has been missing for my girls.

My oldest daughter was recently invited to join Young, Gifted and Black and I am so excited I’m practically doing cartwheels at home. My husband is a little reserved. Young, Gifted and Black is a national program and I am so excited that they have a flagship program here in Oakland, CA. The “application” process is amazing. They first invite your child to observe the program, your child is interviewed by another youth in the program, and your child is then asked to recite a poem by an African American author. Kiah is learning The Blues by Langston Hughes. My daughter came home and said “Mommy, they were all brown!” My younger daughter is a constant performer at heart and seemed to really enjoy the spoken word aspect of the program. She said “Mommy it was really loud but that was good. It was really good!”

Her dad took her for her interview. He said that they were discussing the importance of Assata Shakur. Thank God my husband has known me since undergrad because let’s just say it is no mistake that he did not find the YGB program. We had a long talk last night about Black history, Black pride, and the idea of raising a “militant” child. Because yes, most mainstream Black families struggle with consciousness. We touched and agreed and determined that Young, Gifted and Black is the right next step for our daughters. We love that the program encourages an internal strength for our child. We like that it will develop a strong sense of identity, history and pride for our daughters. Additionally, I want my daughters to love themselves but I also want my daughters to love and appreciate Black boys. With a society that so viciously attacks them I am so excited that she will have such beautiful and intelligent group of young Black men as mentors and role models. Our initial interest in Chinese was solely the language we were not even thinking about the implications of introducing our child into a Chinese Heritage program. We are excited that our daughter is learning so much about Chinese culture but want to make sure that there is a balance.

With the strong education YGB will provide my children in Black history, Black consciousness and social justice I am less concerned about what their Chinese Immersion school is unable to provide.

African American Students