The Indiana Afterschool Network is proud to be part of the Million Girls Moonshot initiative, working to inspire and prepare the next generation of innovators by engaging one million more girls in STEM learning opportunities through OST programs over the next five years. The Million Girls Moonshot is an initiative of the STEM Next Opportunity Fund.

The Million Girls Moonshot seeks to re-imagine who can engineer, who can build, who can make. See below for some information and resources that can help advance this goal!
Best Practices & Professional Development
Best Practices, Resources, and Tools
A toolkit with links to additional resources related to current events and a guide for educators on how to fight racism in their communities. 

Short videos of educators that describe what it means to have a culturally responsive mindset with examples of specific culturally responsive practices in action. 

Information about stereotypes and prejudices and the impact they have on students. It includes a link to "Project Implicit", a test to identify your implicit biases.

White paper that provides an overview of cultural competency in STEM education. It describes: a) stages and steps of cultural competency, b)culturally responsive teaching practices, and c) strategies for developing a culturally responsive out-of-school STEM program.

G. Ladson -Billings gave a talk at the 2007 Urban Sites Network Conference in Washington D.C. where she discusses the term "racial achievement gap" as a construct that considers students as defective and lacking. Instead, she says to approach the achievement gap with a "debt-mindset" instead of a "deficit-mindset" that emphasizes that the achievement gap is complex and systemic.
Creating Professional Development
Tools to Help Create Professional Development for Hoosier Programs
Learn how you can build a culturally competent organization. A resource developed by the University of Kansas.

Find out what it means to be culturally competent in afterschool and learn specific strategies you can apply in your setting.

This paper reviews how peer groups can hinder or help girls’ and women’s sense of belongingness in STEM.

Description of implicit bias, its impact and how to challenge it.

A 14-episode series about race from Duke University for anyone invested in increasing STEM equity.
Additional Virtual Professional Development
Resources to Build Understanding of Equity in STEM
When you think about diversity; how does it show itself? When you stand before your students, do the faces looking back at you look like your own? Most likely your answer is “no”. Classrooms, and out-of-school time programs are becoming more culturally, ethnically, and linguistically diverse, which is leading to both challenges and opportunities for educators.

Join the National Girls Collaborative Project to learn about research-based best practices on cultural responsiveness. A powerful approach that spans the cultural divide that often exists between educators and students and allows educators to improve STEM engagement and equity.