Through hands-on projects and exciting activities, Cal High’s Teaching Tech Club is sparking a love for STEM in elementary school students and trying to shape the next generation of innovators.
The club was founded by juniors Kai Licata, president, and Aritro Bhattacharjee, vice president, this school year. The club’s mission is to help kids find a passion for STEM by working their minds through various projects.
Licata has been passionate about science and math since she began attending Cal. She wants to continue passing on her interest and knowledge to a newer generation of students.
“Being interested in STEM myself, I wanna help kids see if they’re passionate too,” Licata said.
Every two weeks, the club has a meeting and plans for future events and activities. This involves discussing student activities, supplies needed, costs, and the roles of club members who will be participating.
To manage funds, Licata lists all the supplies club officers need while attempting to keep the budget for the activities supplies under $30.
The club had a recent outreach event in March at Country Club Elementary School, where their main focus was activities involving engineering, physics, chemistry, and coding.
Junior Jaina Shah, who is the secretary for the club, said she enjoys these outreach events as well as the club meetings.
“I didn’t expect to have as much fun as I did,” Shah said. “But it really is fun interacting with the kids and doing hands-on activities.”
Every two months, the Teaching Tech club goes to Country Club Elementary to set up station activities. These activities include engineering, computer science, biology, and chemistry projects.
“We did a marshmallow tower once,“ Licata said. “It’s so fun seeing all the kids’ reaction to the project.”
For these events, members are expected to arrive at 3 p.m. so they can set up three to four stations involving different STEM activities. With the assistance of Country Club vice principal Ben Lee, the 25 elementary school students get into groups of six to eight. Each group has about 30 minutes at each station to work through that part of the activity..
Junior club member Armaan Gill said she joined because of the opportunity to work and connect with kids.
“It’s just a fun community to work with and a great opportunity to learn to work with a younger group of kids,” Gill said.
The Teaching Tech Club had an outreach event in December when students created four stations that consisted of coding labs on school chromebooks, DNA cell representation with gummies, a popsicle stick bridge, and a robot hand.
Country Club staff member Yaksi Granados, who is a head teacher at the after-school program Kids Country, supervises many of the children who attend and enjoy the Teaching Tech Club’s events.
“[After the] last event, they all came up to me and told me about it, “ Granados said. “One of them told me their favorite activity was the DNA gummies.”
Granados believes the club has great influence on the younger students because it helps expose them to different STEM topics at such a young age.
For future meetings, Licata and Bhattacharjee hope to have the stations run more smoothly. They also hope to find new members to bring for each event.
“With the help of our club members we plan to make the club a fun space.” Bhattacharjee said. “Not only for the kids, but for us too.”