Akil Rahim believes that three-year-olds are all scientists in the making.
Rahim’s Community Fellowship project, The George Washington Carver DISCO STEAM Inventurers, has a long name but a fairly simple concept. The idea is to help low-income parents develop and nurture in their preschool-aged children a lifelong interest in science, technology, engineering, art and math (STEAM).
“Children are naturally curious, naturally inquisitive; they are natural scientists,” says Rahim, who has four decades of experience as a teacher and a teacher of teachers. “We come into the world wanting to know why, wanting to know what something is. We have to help parents become a part of not letting that die. We have to teach them not to be afraid of their children’s questions and to build off those questions, recognizing that any moment can be a moment for learning.”
Dorian Green, 22, and his 3-year-old daughter Jalyn Brooks are participants in Akil Rahim’s George Washington Carver DISCO STEAM Inventurers Project, designed to help low-income parents develop and nurture in their preschool-aged children a lifelong interest in science, technology, engineering, art and math (STEAM).
Dorian Green’s mother Stephanie Ransom heard about Rahim’s program at Metro Delta Head Start, where Jalyn attends school. “We’re looking for changes in the trees,” Ransom says. “We went outside and picked a tree in the backyard and we took pictures of it. We followed it for three weeks. Everybody’s in such a hurry all the time. So seeing trees, leaves, things changing—it’s good for her to stop and take these things in.”
Akil Rahim gathers parents and grandparents from Head Start centers around the city to participate in monthly trainings on various “inventures”—a combination of inventions and adventures—that they can do at home with minimal or no cost. “There’s a national emphasis on students who are going into STEAM,” Rahim says. “There’s a big need in the country for people with those skills. The idea is to help parents return to their own lost interest in being inquisitive so they can nurture it in their children.”
Caregivers learn from Rahim to track the changing colors of the leaves, practice rudimentary astronomy by searching for the moon in the daytime or experiment with food coloring in water. “Even at this young age, parents can help their children understand that chemistry is what happens when two or more materials are mixed together and colors are the parts of light we can see,” Rahim says.
Lolita Duppins and her daughter LaShawna Stanback, 4, play at the Union Baptist Church Head Start with artificial leaves of varying colors, shapes and sizes. Duppins helps LaShawna count the points on the leaves, sort them and line them up in patterns of the preschooler’s choice. Happily playing with her mother, LaShawna is unaware that she is learning math.
The “DISCO” portion of Rahim’s project stands for: discover, investigate, stimulate and create opportunities. “We teach parents how to ask the right questions, how to look at a sweet potato and say, ‘What is this? What was it before it looked like what you see now? And what will it become?’” Rahim says. “And then take the sweet potato home and get the child involved in cooking it. That’s science.”
Crystal Oats, and son Ezekiel, 3, play with remote control cars and building blocks—while learning about science. “I see this as a way to get the whole process started before the children ever get into the public school system,” Rahim says. “Then, once they get into the system, the parents will be advocates for maintaining that kind of education in schools.”
