Watch: A Love of Science Emerges from Dance

Through dance, a New York City educator is reinventing what it means for girls of color to engage with science

Yamilée Toussaint Beach has been dancing all her life—from early childhood, to studying mechanical engineering at MIT, to teaching high school algebra in the East New York neighborhood of Brooklyn. While teaching, she became aware of just how few opportunities her students had to engage with science and how much potential was being suppressed.

To change this, Toussaint Beach invoked her background in dance to design a program that would unleash the potential of girls of color in New York City. She started STEM From Dance, and within that organization, a summer program called Girls Rise Up. Girls Rise Up is a three-week program during which girls create a choreographed, technology-infused dance routine; the tech can be anything from lighting on their costumes to projections on the screen behind them as they perform.

In this video, see how Toussaint Beach is reinventing what it means for girls of color to engage with STEM.

STEM From Dance joined the Science Sandbox community of awardees in May 2018.

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