Mrs Smart (Head of Science)

On Thursday 14th November, BGS welcomed over 100 students from Mark Rutherford, Goldington Academy and Castle Newnham schools for STEM Ambassador training workshops. Delivered by Neil Atkins of Rubbish Science as part of our local Physics Partners partnership, the purpose of the workshops was to challenge and engage students with the world and wonder of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) subjects.

During the morning, Neil worked with the Year 12 students on challenging stereotypes, building resilience and confidence as STEM communicators. He challenged some of the emotional reasoning responses we all have, which can form barriers to resilience, and encouraged divergent thinking, something we all get progressively worse at as we get older.

The girls participated in various activities from pulling the tablecloth from under beakers of water to match-box drops and making fishing lines from plastic bags. In the next session, the Sixth Formers then passed these skills onto the Year 9 girls, who then ran sessions with Years 6 and 7 girls in the afternoon.

Sabira Egan (BGS, Lower Sixth) said: “Mr Atkins was very engaging, interesting and relatable to us. We learnt about resilience and thinking flaws and the idea of failure and whether it matters to fail.”

Frances Pinsent, Head of Science at Mark Rutherford School said: “It was great to see the Sixth Formers feeling proud of the Year 9 students they had trained and for them to see the immediate impact of their work.”

It was fantastic to see so many girls from all over Bedford working together and sharing their love of STEM with younger girls. Most importantly encouraging them to have the confidence and resilience to follow a path into the career path of their choice, and not be influenced by the gender stereotype threats that unfortunately are still often all too present in society today.