Matt Fitzgerald, a year-in-industry intern at Labman, along with his colleague Lucy Fox, visited Stokesley School to help with their career enrichment day. Matt tells us more…
I love tiny humans. They make me laugh and seeing their brains click as they get excited and learn new things itself is exciting, especially if you’re the one doing the teaching.
Lucy and I presented 3 separate hour long workshops to 25 year 8 students. The aim was to encourage those who already knew they liked science/technology/engineering/maths (STEM)and open the idea to those who hadn’t thought about it as a possible pathway before.
Interesting talks and activities
Our workshops consisted of a presentation on Labman and how we use STEM in our work every day. Thanks to some enthusiastic storytelling and engaging visual media on our systems, the students listened and enjoyed what we had to say.
With spaghetti and masking tape, they assembled into 5 teams each of 5 members. Armed with some structural engineering tips they proceeded to build the tallest, most beautiful and strongest towers. Judged in that order by Lucy and I, the build-up culminated in the strength test where we proceeded to blow (and in some clever kids cases physically push) their towers until a series of spaghetti demolition sites gave us our winners.
A show of hands at the start and finish indicated we had done a good job at opening up the idea of engineering to kids that previously hadn’t thought about it. An email from the mother of one enthusiastic student confirmed we had done a good job at reinforcing the beliefs of those who were already interested.
Special thanks to all
A big thank you to all at Stokesley Secondary school who gave us such a warm welcome and accompanied us through the careers event they kindly organised however, the most praise must go to the kids. Some we struck an engineering chord with, others we didn’t but the fact everyone engaged, supported and listened to each other as a team made it a very enjoyable morning for both Lucy and I and I think, everyone else involved.
P.S It’s ironic there aren’t more females in engineering, it was girl groups that built most of the winning towers!