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Overlapping chatter in Mandarin and English floated through the room and reverberated from paper cups on a warm Thursday afternoon in Rowland Heights.
“I know why you can’t hear it, because look,” 7-year-old Hailey Sung said in Mandarin, showing her partner, ESL student Connor, a gaping hole at the bottom of her cup.
Nearby, a high school student volunteer switched between languages to support several energetic children swinging their cup phones like lassos.
This hour-long “cup phone lab” lesson at iDREAM Academy Afterschool was organized by the Walnut High School chapter of STEMsters (science, technology, engineering, and math), high school student-run nonprofit, with more than 60 chapters across Southern California.
Transitional kindergarteners through seventh-graders, split across two groups, tested the effects of different variables on how well they could hear messages through the classic cup phone.
“They take advantage of current technology,” iDream administrative manager Shaunes Kim said. “They bring their own experiments. Sometimes they even incorporate 3D printing. They always ask us, ‘hey, is there any way we can improve?’ And if I go, ‘could you accommodate this?’
They’re very open to critique and working together.”
Founded in 2023 by Arcadia High School students creating hands-on projects for local elementary-age students, the nonprofit now boasts chapters across the nation that host weekly or biweekly lessons, according to the STEMsters website: stemsters.org.
In a economic landscape where STEM career growth has outpaced all other occupations and is projected to continue to do so, STEM education is in great demand.
STEMsters particularly aims to support underrepresented populations in these paths to higher wages and greater economic mobility.
Many high school students begin volunteering at STEMsters due to an interest in STEM careers, and stay for the joy of collaboratively creating curriculum with peers. The curriculum team meets every Sunday to “try out different ideas, materials, and concepts,” according to Dexter Tu, curriculum director and rising Arcadia High School senior.
“The beauty of having a group of so many different students from different schools is that you work together to come up with more unique ideas,” rising senior at South Hills High School and STEMsters project lead Mandy Guan said. “There’s so many STEM projects online already, you have to think outside the box.”
STEMsters distributes about seven lessons each semester to its myriad chapters across libraries, elementary schools, and after-school programs. This summer, the curriculum focuses on physics and chemistry, but the leadership is cooking up a new robotics initiative to begin in the fall.
“As a middle schooler, I always struggled to find a competition that I enjoyed that was also accessible, and looking online at robotics competitions, the entry cost is actually insane,” Vice President and rising Arcadia High School senior, Max Sun, said. “Our goal with the STEMsters robotics competition is to provide affordable and accessible robotics experiences for middle schoolers.”
After almost two years volunteering with the organization, during which Sun also served as curriculum director, he now oversees both the Curriculum and the new Systems and Automation divisions, focused on streamlining their workflow.
“I love STEM, and oftentimes people categorize themselves or identify themselves as being STEM people or not STEM people, and are scared of it,” Sun said. “I want to come in early on and show them that STEM is for everyone and that everyone can do it.”
Expanding the reach of the nonprofit has illuminated additional considerations for accessibility for the high school student volunteers.
“It’’s crazy how different elementary school kids are even within one class,” Sun said. “One of them has almost better lesson ideas than we do, but also others might struggle with some basic skills, like typing on a keyboard. We’ve had such a wide range of students that it’s changed my mindset on how we develop curriculum and the different levels needed at different after-school centers or elementary schools, just to make sure that we cater directly to their needs.”
While their current curriculum is differentiated by age group, with one version targeting K-2 students, and another for 3-5th grade, the team is beginning to work on adjusting lessons based on the socioeconomic status of the school population as well.
“It’s such a great feeling to be able to work with so many different kids and see how they approach your concept,” said Amie Bui, the new outreach director and senior at Silver Creek High School, in Northern California. “It also just made me more patient.”
Founder Ivan Leong, a current senior at Northwestern University, still guides the vision of STEMsters as chairman and encourages the current leadership to pave the way for long-term sustainability.
“Leong taught us that since STEMsters is a totally high school organization, an important part of our process is handing it down to the next grade level, as after four years, everyone’s going to graduate,” Sun said.
“There’s a lot of incredibly driven minds and passionate people,” Bui said. “Everybody’s working so hard, and it just makes you want to do so much more. Everybody wants to help everybody else grow, and I think that’s really what STEMsters is about.”
Ellen Wang is an intern with the Southern California News Group through a partnership with the Los Angeles chapter of the Asian American Journalists Association (AAJA/LA).
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