Category: middle school

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Girls Won the Five Top Prizes in National STEM Contest for Middle Schoolers

As people say, “The future is female.” And that trend was certainly on display recently at the 2019 Broadcom MASTERS competition. The competition, “Math, Applied Science, Technology, and Engineering for Rising Stars,” highlights very bright middle-schoolers and is run by the Society for Science & the Public.

This year, girls won all of the top five prizes awarded at the competition in Washington, D.C. What makes it even more extraordinary is that the five winners were out of a total pool of 2,348 applicants from 47 states. A total of 18 boys and 12 girls were then brought to D.C. to take part in the competition.

While in D.C., the middle-schoolers were given STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) projects to work on in teams. The youngsters were judged on leadership, teamwork, problem solving, and communication. The last 20% of their score was based on the science projects that the kids had applied to the competition with. The panel of judges included engineers, scientists, and educators.

The five winners were:

The Samueli Foundation Prize: $25,000
Alaina Gassler, Improving Automobile Safety by Removing Blindspots

Lemelson Award for Invention: $10,000
Rachel Bergey, Spotted Lanternflies: Stick’em or Trick’em

Marconi/Samueli Award for Innovation: $10,000
Sidor Clare, Bound and Bricked

Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Award for Health Advancement: $10,000
Alexis MacAvoy, Designing Efficient, Low-Cost, Eco-Friendly Activated Carbon for Removal of Heavy Metals from Water

STEM Talent Award, sponsored by DoD STEM: $10,000
Lauren Ejiaga, Ozone Depletion: How it Affects Us

Maya Ajmera, president and CEO of the Society for Science & the Public, said,”We are just so thrilled that the top five winners were girls this year. This is the first time in our history that it was a sweep for girls. It’s also the first time in our history that we had more girl finalists than boy finalists.”

Way to go ladies! Keep your eye on these kids, because they’re going places.

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Middle School Students Protested the Lack of Free Tampons at School with Inventive ‘Tampon Cookies’

These kids weren’t messing around…

Having periods can cost you roughly $18,000 over the course of your lifetime, according to 2017 analysis by HuffPost. It doesn’t quite seem fair that half of the population should have to pay out of pocket for an uncontrollable health necessity, which is why many folks have recently begun advocating for free tampons and pads at work, schools, and public places.

Now, even young people are getting in on the fight.

A group of middle schoolers organized to ask the principal to start distributing free tampons in the bathroom. The male principal refused, claiming that kids would “abuse the privilege.”

Whatever that means…

The students didn’t give up, though. They protested by making cookies in the shape of tampons.

Ilyse Hogue, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, is the friend of the parent of a seventh-grader at the school. She told the story on Twitter.

“The kids decided to hold a cookie protest,” Ilyse wrote. “Behold the tampon cookies!”

The cost of tampons is especially unfair for young students, who have no control over their parents’ level of income or wealth. Kids who don’t have reliable access to menstrual products may not be able to attend school consistently.

The cookies appear to be made of wafers, red and white frosting, and string.

In response to Ilyse’s tweet, other Twitter users shared stories of similar actions at other middle and high schools.

They also mocked the principal’s concerns and praised the students’ creativity.

As one user wrote: “The kids are DEFINITELY alright.” And hopefully, their efforts are successful!

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Students Make Tampon Cookies for Their Principal After He Refuses to Put Tampons in the Bathrooms

Leave it to a man to do something this ridiculous regarding women’s health. At a middle school recently, some kids got pretty peeved when the (male) principal argued against putting a tampon machine in the restroom because the students would “abuse the privilege”…whatever that means.

So what did these obviously bright and crafty seventh graders decide to do? They held a protest and baked some tampon cookies.

People thought the protest was pretty amazing, and the responses came rolling in.

“Each generation is incorporating feminism into child-rearing more and more. Yesterday’s ‘you can be a doctor’ is now ‘you can be a doctor and you can demand tampons.”

“She and every girl in the school should rally together and agree that every. single. time. they need a tampon, they should bypass all other adults at school and go ask for one from the principal directly.”

“Maybe the girls should demonstrate that they are not taking advantage of free tampons by returning them to the principal when they are finished with them.”

The girls who baked the cookies also released a statement under the name Revolutionary Girls’ Baking Society (this just keeps getting better) to update the world on what happened after the tweet went viral. The statement said, in part:

“After our cookie protest, our principal and the school board are now working to make sure every girl in our town will have the products they need readily available so no girl misses a day of school. We are very grateful that the school has taken our action seriously and is making a change. Feminine hygiene is not a luxury or a privilege, and not having tampons and pads is a barrier to every girl’s education.

Ours is a story of standing up with love and courage for our basic rights. Stand with us and work locally, nationally, and internationally to support the health and rights of all people. Check out Period.org or any of the hundreds of organizations working to ensure equal access to education for all.

Your actions can and do make a difference. We know, because ours did. If tampon cookies can spark a revolution, then the possibilities are endless!

Signed,
The Revolutionary Girls’ Baking Society, baking a difference one bizarre confection at a time.”

You can read the full statement from the girls HERE.

I just love this story so much!

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