Respecting Our Diversity
My son has this quote framed in his room, and when I asked him why these words meant so much to him he said, “It’s about my dyslexia. It makes me feel okay about things that I have to work harder at than others, like reading and writing. And it makes me feel proud of the things that I’m really good at already, like our mini-society project and my social studies quizzes.”
These words are so important to me because they reflect the challenge we have existing in a society that expects everyone to be the same, when in reality, everyone is so wonderfully and fabulously different.
My Start-in-STEM Experience
During my sophomore year of high school, I worked as a technician at a hearing- aid facility was located about a half mile from my school. I took electronics classes every year in high school, and my freshman class teacher referred me to the company for a position working during the evenings after school and on weekends. I made $6.50 an hour and thought I was the luckiest teenager on the planet— it empowered me to buy the “expensive jeans” at the mall and save up for my first car. It taught me valuable lessons about hard work and the importance of technology, but mostly it was just very fun!
