Venture Girls: Raising Girls To Be Tomorrow's Leaders

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Welcome to Principal Center Radio, bringing you the best in professional practice.

[00:06] Announcer:

Here's your host, director of the Principal Center and champion of high-performance instructional leadership, Justin Bader. Welcome, everyone, to Principal Center Radio.

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I'm your host, Justin Bader, and I'm honored to be joined today by Dr. Christal Glenschey. Dr. Glenschey is a scientist, entrepreneur, and mentor with a passion for teaching and engaging girls in entrepreneurship, science, and technology. She's the founder and CEO of Venture Lab and previously founded a nanotechnology drug delivery company. And she's the author of Venture Girls, Raising Girls to be Tomorrow's Leaders.

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And now, our feature presentation.

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Christal, welcome to Principal Center Radio.

[00:46] SPEAKER_02:

Thank you for having me.

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So tell me a little bit about the origin of the book. What did you see happening in society, in industry? What did you see happening with kids that prompted you to write Venture Girls?

[00:58] SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. I mean, I think it was a mix of things. It was kind of my own experiences as an engineer and a woman in tech, a woman CEO, and kind of noticing the lack of women in these leadership positions. And then going down to the university level where I started teaching entrepreneurship and was in the computer science department at Trinity and noticing girls had already lost a confidence. They would drop out of computer science if they were getting a C. They felt intimidated in entrepreneurship classes.

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And then even going down to my daughter's age, who when I started Venture Lab, at the time they were about four, I started teaching them entrepreneurial concepts and STEM concepts. And the teachers really started noticing a change in their confidence, in their wanting to experiment. So it was really kind of a starting from like the professional level down to college, down to

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elementary school kids. And what are some of those changes? Or what do you see as some of the messages that society sends girls that are kind of in direct conflict with the mindsets and kind of the attitudes that lead people to pursue entrepreneurship?

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Yeah, I think I mean, a lot of times they're unintended, right? If parents are not comfortable with STEM, they may say, Oh, well, honey, we're not science people. Or if sometimes, you know, maybe a girl's not performing well in math, and a teacher, a counselor, you know, may not encourage them to go into an AP class. And even in media, you know, only 12% of STEM characters are fat. So girls are kind of getting these discouraging messages and not seeing themselves in media, in STEM positions.

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Well, and it's especially strange because, you know, we know the statistics are that girls do better in school. There are more women in college than men now. And it seems odd that this has persisted. So thinking about the messages that we send as educators, as parents, what are some things that we might be doing unintentionally to reinforce? You mentioned the idea of persistence, you know, if a math class is hard, or if If a student gets into a class and they see, oh, I'm one of only two girls in this class and everybody else, you know, maybe in this freshman engineering class is male. What are some of the messages that you hear that are discouraging girls from pursuing STEM careers and entrepreneurship?

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And what are some of the messages that we can be sending?

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Well, yeah, I mean, I think the messages that we're sending, you know, whether it is a parent saying, you know, honey, we aren't math people or a teacher or counselor that may inadvertently not kind of encourage a girl to go into STEM. an upper level AP math class. I think what we need to be doing, and Carol Dweck has coined growth mindset. I think that is extremely critical, really praising girls for their abilities and instilling in them that idea of persistence. Another big thing is encouraging failure. I think a lot of girls, there's the imposter syndrome.

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So a lot of girls, women will not try things that are maybe out of their comfort zone because they don't feel like experts. So really in girls to experiment and to fail. I think failing young and failing quickly so that when they do get into upper division courses and they become very hard, they're kind of used to it. I mean, failure is just part of the scientific method. You are testing a hypothesis and it either works or doesn't work, but you don't take it personally. You just different methodology.

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So I think it is, I think we can change the messaging that we're telling our girls.

[04:26] SPEAKER_01:

Absolutely. That's how we learn is to try things, to fail, to learn from them. And you have actually tried things and experimented in terms of teaching girls to try things and experiment. Tell us a little bit about your work at Venture Lab.

[04:39] SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. So I think what I found through my years in academia and then working with K-12 students that for girls in particular, There was a Girl Scout study done a few years ago showing that girls would really get engaged in STEM if you could show how it helps people on the planet. And for me, that's what entrepreneurship does is that you are solving a problem. You're using STEM concepts to get to, you're actually enacting that solution to create some sort of product or service and even a company, which is great, but not necessary. But you're really showing them that whole pathway of taking an idea and solving a problem and turning it into something real.

[05:21] SPEAKER_01:

Absolutely. And that's one kind of underlying theme in project-based learning, which we're very big on at the Principal Center and the Project-Based Learning Network. And the desire to have an impact. You know, often we encourage girls to express their impact through caring or through service. But it sounds like the work you're doing in Adventure Lab is also about research and entrepreneurship, you know, not just having a traditional nurturing attitude toward a problem or wanting to care about a problem, but actually to develop a solution.

[05:52] SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. And I'd say, you know, just even giving some examples, you know, we would have some of the girls build robotic hands. And whether you're doing it with five-year-olds and you're using, you know, straws and string and cardboard, or you're actually 3D printing a robotic hand. The idea is that you're teaching them these STEM skills, but we go a step farther and say, okay, now how would we use this hand to solve a problem and how could you actually apply it? And so we have them go out and do market research and, you know, maybe talk to people in the medical community or talk to people that are missing limbs and figuring out how could they actually use this thing that they built to help others. And, you know, with hydroponics, we teach the girls how to make a little hydroponics kit, but thinking about it makes them You know, maybe there's an arid region in Africa that needs a certain type of herb or certain type of plant that can't be grown there naturally.

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So how would they actually solve that problem? So it's really applying these STEM concepts and STEM skills to solve, I want to say, social entrepreneurship or social impact problems.

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And I think there's an angle there where the kind of ethnographic or anthropological understanding, as well as the ecological and scientific understanding, you know, if you're going to develop a water pump or develop a particular crop that will work in a certain place, it's also important to think about the people who are there, not just the conditions. So lots of opportunities there.

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And I'd say even, you know, using, so we use a lot of the design thinking processes, you know, thinking about... And going out and actually talking to the potential users, talking to the people in the region. And so it's really doing a lot of that research ahead of time and then designing with people in mind.

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So Christal, let me ask about the parenting side. So I have two daughters and I understand you have two daughters as well. Is that right?

[07:39] SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, two boys and two girls.

[07:41] SPEAKER_00:

Yeah.

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So this is not just an academic or professional interest for either of us. We're also parents who want our own daughters to have whatever options they want in life and be able to solve whatever problems they want to tackle in the world. What are some of your top recommendations on the parent side? What can we be doing as parents to raise venture girls?

[08:01] SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, I think it's really starting with a mindset of curiosity and experimentation and making sure that they do understand that failure is part of learning, right? Because if you're, you know, a toddler and you gave up after you tried to walk, we'd never be walking. Or like if you tried to ride a bike and you fell off and just quit. So I really try and talk to them about the importance of failure. We do a lot of play. So a lot of getting messy.

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I know a lot of parents, you know, are a little cautious with their kids. And I mean, I don't think you want them running around with steak knives, but just, you know, that maybe are slightly out of I'd say out of their comfort zone or even out of your comfort zone sometimes. So really, you know, we'll make a little maker space in our garage and let them play around with tools and build things and screw things in, taking things apart. I think even your kids, I mean, that's science, that's experimentation, and they really enjoy making little concoctions and having us try it. So I think there's a lot of things we can do to kind of encourage this I want to say self-confidence by experimenting and always being curious about their surroundings.

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And what's your opinion on structure? Because you talk about getting messy and make, you know, playtime and the opportunity to kind of just make, letting kids kind of work in a maker space. But I feel like there's also this pressure on parents to put their kids in all the activities, right? And we're kind of in the middle of that right now with, you know, whether it's soccer or music lessons or horseback riding lessons or, you know, Girl Scouts or, you know, we've got all these different activities that are great. But they're also structured and they're not, you know.

[09:42] SPEAKER_02:

I mean, there's definitely a balance. I feel like we have gotten a lot away from a lot of the creativity. Right. When I mean, I know when I was a kid, it was, you know, here's this box of cardboard. Use your imagination. So I think we want to put them in things where it's very open-ended, where they can imagine, they can be creative.

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But I do think, especially at a younger age, whether it's music, piano, horse riding, soccer, I think it's good to expose kids to each of those things in moderation. But yeah, I mean, I know some people that have their kids in after-school programs every single day, but I think they need time also just to be kids and to be creative and use their imaginations.

[10:19] SPEAKER_01:

Crystal, thinking about our role as parents, obviously we want to model that willingness to fail, that willingness to try things and experiment and learn from failure and not be discouraged by it. So certainly our own lives are, you know, kind of one source of inspiration and example to kids, you know, take it or leave it on their part. But thinking about other people, bringing in other mentors or kind of pointing the way to other role models, what do you recommend that parents do to let kids know that, you exactly what their parents do. Of course, at a certain age, kids just imagine themselves doing exactly what their parents did, but then over time, they'd develop their own interests. What can we do on the role model side?

[10:59] SPEAKER_02:

Well, yeah. And I actually wanted to give one example first of parents as role models. So something that I kind of learned from reading an article about Sarah Blakely is that her dad, so she's creator of Spanx, and her dad would sit at the dining room table with them and ask, what did you fail at today? And that's something that I I use all the time and I love it. We'll sit with our family. And I think it's really important for us as parents to not come across as perfect and say, hey, we're human too and we fail too, but we solve our problems and we fix it.

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So as far as providing outside role models, I think that is very critical, right? Because if a girl can't see herself doing something, it's really challenging for her to make that kind of mental leap. But if she sees a woman doing it, it really helps her kind of self-cast and put her. So I'd say for, for younger girls in particular, like elementary school age, even having, you know, role models, girls that are in junior high and high school that maybe happened to be in, you know, maybe it's first robotics or one of the robotics club or, a math club, even introducing them to college girls that are in engineering classes. Or if you have a friend that is a female engineer or doctor or whatever field your daughter's interested in, Just I wouldn't be afraid to reach out to them because, you know, people are always wanting to help. And if you're saying, hey, you know, my daughter would love to learn about what you're doing.

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It depends on their age, but if they want to shadow the person. I've just found that people are really willing to help, especially if, you know, they know they're serving as a role model for a girl.

[12:35] SPEAKER_01:

let's shift back to the the school setting for for just a moment because you mentioned robotics programs and of course you know schools have always taught science at least at the secondary level and hopefully at the elementary level we're teaching science but the entrepreneurship angle is one that my friend don wetrick is is pursuing to great effect but you don't hear a ton about school-based approaches to teaching entrepreneurship because i don't know if we're afraid that Kids will drop out of school and go start their companies in their garages. Maybe they'll be the next, you know, I don't know why we kind of fear that topic. But I think it's definitely something that is not present in K-12 the way it could be. What's your take on that?

[13:12] SPEAKER_02:

I think entrepreneurship is maybe seven years behind where coding is. You know, I've seen it. I taught it at the grad level and then it went to undergrad. I'd say now high schools are really starting to embrace entrepreneurship. And I know of a couple different programs that are starting with, you know, middle school and elementary school. I think the hard thing is that it's not quite understood.

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And I would say, you know, it's not a core course. So it's kind of hard to ask the teachers to kind of do even more. And especially when they're not comfortable with what the definition of entrepreneurship is. And for me, it's really something that you can't. to a classroom. It's a mindset and a skill set.

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And it's really about, you know, idea generation research, which is market research. It's design thinking. It's problem solving. It's public speaking. So going out and persuasively talking to someone about your idea. So I think for me, it's skills that really translate any discipline.

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I think the hard part is how do we get it built into the structure of K-12?

[14:16] SPEAKER_01:

And I love what you said about it being seven years behind coding because, okay, finally we're getting coding and we're getting the idea that we can teach kids more about computer science than how to use Microsoft Office. And I think that's good. But at the Honestly, those skills are not necessarily as rare or valuable as they once were. And compared to entrepreneurship, which has this broad set of kind of problem-seeking and problem-solving and risk-taking and experimenting and learning things built into it, a different mindset that are useful throughout life, I think if I had to choose between teaching coding and teaching entrepreneurship, the kids who are in the entrepreneurship program will learn coding if they need to. but the kids who are in the entrepreneurship program can go anywhere. And I think that's, that's just so exciting.

[15:07] SPEAKER_02:

Well, I would say one thing that I always like to say is that, you know, 65% of kids in elementary school today right now will not have jobs that we can't even imagine. And so kind of this goes to coding while it's great that we're teaching these hard skills, you know, those skills, you know, 10, 20 years from now are going to be completely different. And that for me is why I think entrepreneurship is so critical. It's, It's teaching creativity. It's teaching lateral thinking. It's teaching critical thinking.

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It's teaching that problem solving, opportunity seeking. And these are the kids that are going to be creating the future jobs and the future careers.

[15:42] SPEAKER_01:

So the book is Venture Girls, Raising Girls to be Tomorrow's Leaders by the founder of Venture Lab, Dr. Christal Glunchai. Christal, thanks so much for joining me on Principal Center Radio.

[15:53] SPEAKER_02:

Well, thank you so much for having me.

[15:55] Announcer:

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