Week Three: Women in Science

For our third week at Black Hawk, we focused on women in science. However, we did forget that this meeting fell on Halloween, so everyone munched on some candy as we learned about notable women like Marie Curie, Jane Goodall, and Rosalind Franklin. The attendees had recently learned about Jane Goodall in school, so they ended up teaching us about her! Then we focused on how women in STEM fields has been increasing in recent times, but how we still have lots of work to do since women are still greatly underrepresented in fields like engineering, computer science, and astronomy. We then challenged the attendees to be engineers themselves, when we conducted an "Egg Drop" experiment. With only the tools of a cup, a few cotton balls, some tissues, and tape, each person had to design a way to hold the egg in place, so that when thrown from atop a chair, it would survive the fall. We had quite a few cracked eggs, but some survived the drop! It was another exciting and fun day and we are already looking forward to next week.

Week Two: Women in Sports

For our second week, we focused on women's contribution to sports. We had special guests join us, the UW Madison Women's Club Basketball Team! We began with a presentation discussing the discrepancies in pay between women and men in athletics and how athletic advertisements have been known to objectify women, displaying them with minimal clothing. Then, the students had an opportunity to ask the players about what it was like for a woman in college athletics and the team offered extremely insightful information to the budding young athletes. Afterwards, we all headed outside for some Knockout and 5-on-5 in the beautiful sunshine. A huge thank you to the UW Madison Women's Club Basketball team for joining us for this super fun event!

Week One: Women in the Arts

Our first week at Black Hawk Middle School was focused on Women in the Arts! The 11 students involved discussed different artists such as Georgia O'Keeffe (a Wisconsin resident!), Frida Kahlo, Yayoi Kusama, and Kara Walker. We also discussed how most notable artists tend to be male and why more attention has historically been paid to men in the field. Then, in the style of photographer Dorthea Lange, we gave the students disposable cameras to shoot their environments at school. There were lots of selfies taken, some nature pictures, and some awesome group shots.