“Little girls with dreams become women with vision.”

The quote above is on a print on the wall of my home office. The quote above speaks a truth that drives so much of what I do. I believe that if you train up a girl in the way she should go, when she is old she will not depart from it. That’s why I created a Women and Media elective at the high school where I teach — I want girls to know about feminism and the women’s rights movements and to be smart enough to examine representations of women in the media. That’s why I dream of one day starting a feminist blogging camp for teen girls through See Jane Write. And that’s why I was honored to team up with B-Metro last week to help promote the new STEM program at Highlands School in Birmingham.

Dubbed Highlands 21, this new program is a strategic school-wide effort to implement 21st century learning techniques by building enhanced facilities, increasing classroom resources and improving faculty development. The school has launched a 4K-8th grade initiative to integrate science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) throughout the Highlands School curriculum with the support of two state-of-the-art STEM labs designed by PITSCO.

Here’s a fun fact about me: Even though I’m writer and English teacher today I attended the Alabama School of Fine Arts for its Math/Science program, not creative writing. Because of my amazing English classes (and a love for writing that I had since I was 7), I left ASFA eager to pursue a career in journalism, not science, technology, engineering, or math. But because of ASFA’s Math/Science program I also left with a great deal of confidence and never for one second considered STEM classes or careers off-limits for women and girls. (In fact, my freshman year of college I took a senior-level calculus class, made 100s on every test and tutored many of the upperclassmen also taking the course.)

A recent survey of educators revealed that only 30 percent of teachers feel equipped to properly encourage girls in math and science classes. The programs and professional development of Highlands School’s STEM initiative and others like it can help change that.

Also STEM programs teach students how to find answers in informational text and thus can help them in their language arts classes, too. Perhaps that’s why I liked English so much that I wound up teaching it!