Rhea Khatri has loved the subjects of science, technology, engineering and mathematics since she was a kid. She likes them so much, in fact, that she decided that she was going to teach STEM to kids half her age before she even finishes her own high school education.
For the last two years, the High School South senior has instructed children between the ages of 5 to 9 from Plainsboro, West Windsor and Trenton as part of the STEM Smart classes she has conducted at the Plainsboro Recreation and Cultural Center and for HomeFront in Trenton.
Khatri’s STEM Smart program was created as an idea for Khatri’s Girl Scout Gold Award—a program that requires scouts to create and execute a plan that demonstrates civic responsibility, but it is also rooted in her own childhood exposure to the STEM fields.
“Towards the end of my sophomore year of high school, I was eligible to start working on my Gold Award project for Girl Scouts, which is when I came up with the idea of the STEM Smart classes. I was fortunate enough as kid to be able to attend similar classes outside of the classroom environment, and I owe my interest in the STEM fields to the workshops I attended myself as a nine year old,” said Khatri, a resident of Plainsboro.
“This is what inspired me to create a place where the kids would still be learning about a broad spectrum of scientific topics, but they would also have the opportunity to be creative and have fun at the same time through the hands-on crafts and experiments,” she said.
During the process of creating and hosting the class, Khatri was aided by Tara Miller, her mentor in several Girl Scout projects and an environmental education specialist at the Plainsboro Recreation Center and Community Services Department.
Miller has worked with Khatri for nearly six years and helped her both secure a location to host her classes and publicize the program through the Plainsboro Community Recreational newsletter and website, which is how many parents first heard of the class.
Khatri first started by doing a trial run at one of Miller’s summer camps with kids who were in the same age group to see what kind of topics they enjoyed learning about the most. From there, Miller helped her announce the classes by placing them on recreation center’s roster.
Like most activities in the Plainsboro Recreational Center, the was a small charge for the STEM Smart classes to help defray the costs of supplies such as pencils, paper and markers.
Khatri structured her classes specifically to help students discover STEM phenomenon, and how they occur.
Khatri said that she discussed a new topic every week, rotating between science, technology, engineering, and math. Since each session was eight classes, she would cover each category twice with her students.
She spent the first half of the class teaching about that day’s lesson and encouraging the kids to think by asking them trivia style questions. In the second half, she had the kids either perform an experiment or complete an arts and crafts related project.
Miller believes that Khatri’s classes were a success. “Her classes are always full with a waiting list, so that in itself says something about the class and about Rhea as a teacher,” Miller said in an email interview.
Khatri said she believes the class as a whole most enjoyed when she taught about sound waves and how telephones work. At the end of the class, Khatri had the students each build their own “telephone” using cups and string.
“They were absolutely fascinated that they could talk to each other from opposite ends of the room without shouting,” she said. They also seemed to enjoy the class in which they built a marshmallow shooter to learn about basic forces. “Although this was probably because they got to eat the marshmallows after class,” she said.
Khatri said she enjoys seeing her students learn and share their new knowledge. One time she even had a student who was so excited that he understood the lesson that he walked up to the board in the middle of the class to help her teach. “He was just so passionate about the subject at hand. It’s always nice to see that the kids are enjoying themselves and willing to help each other out,” she said.
Khatri believes she’s learned plenty from the experience as well. “I’ve learned how to look at things from not just a student perspective, but also a teacher’s point of view. Over the past year or so, I’ve certainly developed more responsibility skills and become a better communicator, and these are essential life skills that I can definitely see myself using in college and beyond,” Khatri said.
Khatri added that the classes she taught at HomeFront were a different experience that helped to add a different perspective. “It was interesting to teach students in an environment outside of the WW-P district, because the education system is completely different for them, and they usually don’t have the same kinds of opportunities that we do here.”
Both the classes and Khatri’s performance as a teacher garnered positive reviews from the students and parents from Plainsboro and West Windsor. Surya Katikireddy, 6, said she enjoyed learning about the life cycle of butterflies, the four seasons and also reading time from a clock. Janvi Irivichetty, also 6, enjoyed learning about the states of matter using Cheerios. Amolika Chatterjee, 6, said she really liked Rhea as a teacher and wished to go to her class again.
Sreedhar Katikireddy, Surya’s father, said Khatri is a good teacher who has passion to work with students and help them grow. And Prathima Jois, a parent with two students in the program (Charvi Yetish, 8, and Yukthi Yetish, 10) said Khatri picks interesting yet practical experiments.
Miller also believes that Rhea did a good job as she overcame the obstacles of teaching. It can be challenging to keep younger students focused and motivated with the task/topic at hand, she said, and teachers have to act on their feet because there are no two classes or students alike.
“What might have worked one session or class might not work with a different set of students,” Miller said in an email. “I believe Rhea recognizes this and is able to adjust her curriculum accordingly.”
Khatri said she aspires to study physics in college and make a difference in the world by continuing to encourage young scientists to pursue careers in the STEM field. She also hopes to continue this class, at least until she graduates from high school. Her next session starts this fall, and she is hoping to have other girls from her Girl Scout troop continue the classes after she goes to college.
Outside of STEM Smart and Girl Scouts, Khatri loves to cook and play the flute. She is also the president of the Band Council at High School South. Her father Raman works in the pharmaceutical field as the director of a life sciences consulting company and her mother Arti s a stay-at-home mom.
More information about STEM Smart is online at stemsmartblog.wordpress.com.
