Earlier this week my colleague Kirstyn and I took 5 of our student leaders to our first ever Leaders in STEM event at RSV (Royal Society Victoria) in Melbourne. This event was the first of its kind, bringing together student leaders from five different Tech Schools with plans to include all 16 Tech Schools in the coming years. Unfortunately the day also landed on 'disrupted travel’ day which meant it took us 3 hours to get into the city from Ballarat. Thank goodness we were traveling with such an awesome group of young people who, as regional kids, were used to being patient when it comes to public transport.
Despite the rather stressful start to the event, the day itself was a huge success. Our students did a wonderful job of mingling with other Tech Schools and we were incredibly proud to see them read the room, step up when needed and support other students, who they’d only just met, if they were feeling a bit overwhelmed.
The objective of Leaders in STEM is to create and support a network of students who are interested in STEM. Each Tech School has a program or is working toward a specific program for this already. What we're doing is bring together these students to create opportunities and connections. Using RSV as a venue gave us access to their fellows which we absolutely took advantage of by inviting a handful to come and talk to our students in small groups.
Overall feedback from both the students and our special guests was that these sessions were the highlight of the day. The students got to talk to an expert in their field and our experts got to speak to a group of engaged young people. I was chatting to one of the fellow afterwards and she was thrilled at the conversation she had had with her group of 5 young men. Her reflection was that we don’t do this enough, have meandering and meaningful conversations about life, values and aspirations with young people. I couldn’t agree more.
From my perspective the highlight of the day (excluding the overall success of the event) had been hanging out with the students as we spent nearly 6 hours in transit. Those moments when I inquired about how school or work was going. It’s relaxed and easy, all it requires is some time and attention. I also think the lack of agenda is important. Speaking with some of the students afterwards, they mentioned that these types of conversations are hard to come by with adults they’re not related to, and even then, it can be hard to have those deeper types of conversations regularly.
As a parent, I agree. This week the most time I’ve spent with the kids is the 20 minutes we eat dinner together before I start writing and Matt gets them ready for bed. Sometimes we manage to get a couple of words in when getting ready for school or during meal prep but most of the time they’re avoiding me because they know I’ll give them chores.
It’s challenging to create genuine moments for these conversations and often when it comes to student voice, it's hard to get it right. I’ve been in many situations where the youth voice has been part of the conversation but it's treated like a tick box exercise. One young person representing all young people in an room of adults. The pressure is unfair and the results are not always useful. Having genuine conversations that are equally in weight and more flowing than functional should be the objective.
I managed to get close yesterday with one of our work experience students. Long story short we needed to hand stitch some leather pouches for a program at the Tech School. Surprisingly this skill set is part of my expertise after my brief stint as an artisan leather good merchant - this is a great example of why you should give everything a go because you never know when skills will resurface. I put my hand up and offered to help teach the student how to stitch and do some stitching myself.
We sat together for an hour and a half with stitching ponies under our knees chatting away about all sorts of things. Life, work, school, aspirations, thoughts about what’s going on in the media. It was great. I had to keep reminding myself that I was the teacher and they were the student because it was such an interesting conversation. I picked his brains about my Respect Ballarat design project I’m working on which was super useful and he asked about what university was like in New Zealand thinking that it may be an option. The situation reminded him about a camp he went on to an indigenous community where they sat around and made stuff while yarning with elders. I felt those vibes as well. We pretty much had created our own yarning circle amongst the 3D printers and laser cutters at the Tech School.
I assume we both walked away from that conversation feeling content and with sore thumbs because we don’t have any thimbles at the Tech School. I wish there was a way to create moments like this more frequently but ironically lack of planning and structure is required for them to naturally occur. Forced deep conversations are no fun for anyone unless you're paying a therapist.
