REACT Special Events: Angel's Youth Center

November 14, 2020

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I participated in the Reaching and Education America's Chemists of Tomorrow (REACT), a Registered Student Organization (RSO) during the Fall 2020 semester. I chose to be part of REACT for several semesters now because I love working with children and inspiring them to become leaders in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) fields. When I was in Elementary School, High School students would volunteer showcasing chemical reaction experiments at my school. At such an early age, I was inspired to take part in a STEM career. Because of those demonstrations, I was part of the robotics club, attended space camp on the weekends, and went to STEM specific camps during the summers. I believe it’s a necessity to show kids at an early age how cool science can be and how impactful it is to be part of the science field for the world. I had fun attending the REACT sessions during weekends in the past semester, volunteering at the science museum in Champaign, as well as in classroom activities. I thought it was amazing seeing not only the children react in a positive manner to the science experiments but also see the parents understand more about what their children were learning.

On November 14, 2020, I participated in REACT's Special Event at Angel's Youth Center on November 14, 2020 with two other demonstrators and a REACT coordinator. For this special event, we showcased five different food science/chemistry experiments, explained the science behind the reactions, and answered any questions, while the elementary school students performed the experiments with us. The five experiments were making plastic out of milk, extracting strawberry DNA, making a volcano out of an orange, creating electric cornstarch, and producing a lava lamp out of household items.

Since the demo took place over zoom, the team and I had to coordinate which experiments we were going to showcase to the students. The most challenging aspect of this experiment was showcasing the reactions over zoom to several students and their families. Some of our challenges: background noise, some people had bad internet connection, so they were lagging and effecting the sound for the other participants, and some students didn't turn on their video cameras. Therefore, even though there were plenty of questions posed to the students, there wasn't much interactions due to the issues that came with zoom. Furthermore, because of the lag produced by one participant, it was difficult to understand some of the answers provided, questions posed, or whether the participants were ready for the next steps. We were able to navigate this issue by asking the participants to write their questions in the zoom chat and we eliminated some of the questions from our plan.

I enjoy working and interacting with children. Therefore, throughout his experiment, the strength that I was able to bring to the table was being encouraging, making sure that the children were following along when it was not my turn to present, and continually interacting with my group mates during their presentation, as well to avoid any silences. Prior to the event, I helped out the REACT coordinator figure out some logistics between who would be able to present which experiment from where everyone will be presenting from. Furthermore, since my group mates were randomly assigned based on everyone's availability, I contacted my team members prior to the event to get to know them. This way, we felt comfortable with presenting to others and create an environment of inclusion while encouraging participation.

I believe that getting children engaged hands on is the best way to gain the child’s attention as well as react positively to their ideas. I am great at “going along with the flow” and am adaptable to any situation. I understand working with children can be challenging because they may lose attention or want to do something else. Furthermore, working together with so many other students for the common goal of showcasing experiments can also be tricky to organize, especially through a virtual platform. Therefore, as a leader, I knew that I had to be adaptable and proactive to have everything run smoothly. Being able to engage with my team prior to the event helped me be even more engaging during the demonstrations.

Additional leadership skills that I noticed that shined through for me were my organization skill gathering materials and making sure everyone had what they needed and submitting the work plan earlier than requested. Throughout the experience, I was a productive, efficient, kind, and upbeat team member of the REACT program.

The two interpersonal competencies I chose to focus on are self-knowledge and relationship management. My justification for developing self-knowledge was that I am unable to describe my weaknesses very well. I understood that I need to know more about my strengths in order to find people who compliment my strengths and weaknesses to create a productive team. Since the REACT group was randomly assigned, I understood that I needed to get to know the team before jumping into the program. I was able to have a zoom session with my team members and based off of our interaction, I was able to see that both of my team members were a bit timid. Therefore, I understood that throughout the program I should the lead and explain the content to the children first and let the team members perform the assigned experiments. They also helped me understand that they were better at communicating scientific concepts at a basic level than me. I was able to identify my weakness and know that they would be able to help me throughout the conceptual explanations.

With regards to relationship management, I believe that I am able to create deep bonds with people but only as long as I interact with them on a daily basis. In the past, I felt as though I ended up not communicating with people as often as I would like. I also noticed that I had trouble creating bonds with people who are outside of my typical routine and with self-confidence. However, throughout the leadership certificate program and interacting with randomly assigned group members (not only for REACT but also in my engineering design courses), I am able to see my confidence growing, being able initiate contact first, and getting to know my group members better from the beginning. I believe that throughout this REACT experience as well as my schoolwork, I am able to create deeper bonds with people who are outside my normal circle and feel more comfortable reaching out later to see how they are generally doing in life.