GLAM: Girls Learning Advanced Math
GLAM girls in the classroom
Written by Tessa Wayne, High School Senior
Growing up, math has always been a part of my identity. I raised my hand in math class more than in any other class, and signed up for as many math electives as I could once I reached high school. I find joy in seeing patterns in the numbers on a scoreboard at a basketball game, and get excited when a challenging math problem is thrown in front of me. I understand that not everyone loves math, and some people believe my passion for it might even be “quirky,” but I believe that everyone who is interested in math or even just thinks they might be interested in math should have a chance to pursue it.
As I got older and continued taking the most challenging math classes I could find at school, the number of girls in my classes began to dramatically decrease. Each year, fewer and fewer girls were in my math classes, and I became suspicious. What was going on? I did some research and discovered that girls start to lose confidence in math as young as middle school! There are multiple studies about the gender discrepancy in math, and each one has said that girls test just as well as boys and that the difference is not academic or in their skill. Rather it’s a matter of confidence. My research also pointed out that this confidence issue was more prevalent in underrepresented schools and neighborhoods.
This is what led me to create GLAM (Girls Learning Advanced Math). GLAM is an organization that teaches young girls at various underrepresented schools fun, challenging, and exciting math that goes beyond what they are learning in school. It is an all-girl environment taught by female high school students to reenforce that it is a place where girls can feel comfortable and be themselves. Not only are the girls there to become more confident mathematicians and be exposed to enjoyable math, but they are there to become more confident women and learn from their instructors who simultaneously act as mentors and of course love math!
Whenever I go into a GLAM session (once a week for an hour at each of our schools) I am overjoyed by the excitement I see in the girls’ faces as they learn new concepts and feel confident in the all-girl atmosphere. The difference I have seen in a group of girls from their first session to their last session has been unbelievable. Every time I walk into a classroom I’m ambushed with stories about the exciting things that happened in their days, what they learned in math classes, and what they want to learn in GLAM.
Another popular topic of conversation is the video games they play. A lot of these middle school girls, who have been selected by their school’s teachers as girls who seem to have an interest in math, also play video games, and this correlation is no coincidence. In each GLAM group, more than half of the girls play video games ranging from Fortnite, to MarioKart, to various games on iPads.
It is so important that girls feel confident in STEM and math and that they can find places, whether it be in video games or a GLAM classroom, to express themselves and feel confident as females in math.
Like what you read? SIGN UP to join the free gameHERs community and get the latest articles, raffles, and podcast & event updates. Want to be featured on our blog? Please email us at letsplay@thegamehers.com and tell us a bit about yourself and the topic(s) you would like to write about.
Like this post? Spread the word! Click the icons below to share it on social media: