This Week

The last full week of February is National Engineer Week.

It's a week when engineering is celebrated as a profession.  Most leaders in the fields of engineering try to educate the public on the impact of engineering on our daily lives.  Even as an engineer, I sometimes marvel at the the things I use on a regular basis.  The other day, I heard a guy on the radio talking about how even something as simple as a pencil is not something one person can produce very easily.  It takes a variety of resources, most of which require engineering, to produce a pencil.

One very important goal of many engineers is to encourage school children to go into engineering.  There is a term called STEM, which stands for science, technology, engineering, and math.  It is a term used to describe the technical fields that many consider "nerdy" and many people tend to think that they're not smart enough to do those types of jobs.  That is a myth.  The fact is that jobs in STEM are for anyone who enjoys being creative, playing, problem solving, and social.  Yes, nerds are social!!  I know because I'm one of them and I'm married to one too.

It's crucial that we as parents and adults break down the stereotypes of STEM and help children, especially girls, see that science and math are not boring subjects and that they are smart enough to learn those things.

In honor of Engineer's Week, I went to Charlie's Kindergarten class to talk with them about engineering and what engineers do.   I read a book called Engineering the ABCs, which lists an item that is made by engineers for each letter.  Then, I talked to them about rockets, which requires lots of engineers to design and build.  After giving them a simple explanation about how a rocket works, I brought out pop rockets that I had made (one with Charlie's help, see picture above) and told them I was going to launch it.  Because it was freezing and snowing outside, we had the students stand by the windows inside while I launched the rocket outside.  The children erupted into cries of "Whoa, that was awesome!" when I returned to the room.  I had given the teacher a couple of coloring pages that had the ABCs and things that were created by engineers that started with each letter.  While they colored, the teacher showed a video of the Space Shuttle Discovery launch from yesterday.