YASTSA STEM Congress
On the 18th and 19th of August Seven Woodville High Students Participated in the YASTSA STEM Congress. This year’s congress had more that 600 students, 150 supporting staff members, a variety of invited guests and Spotlight speakers who presented to the group over both the Thursday and Friday. The Congress theme for 2022 was “Cultural Innovators” and is a student led program that aims to engage young Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students with science, technology, engineering and math learning and industry experiences. Its aim is to inspire them to realise their aspirations and take on challenging subjects at school and in future learning. The congress is designed within an Aboriginal community context, to enable students to explore the skills that will be required as future STEM innovators and problem-solvers.
This year we had 5 of our students involved in presenting the following workshops as a part of the Congress:
Constellation station: Aboriginal astronomy | SAASTA STEM (Liam Norman)
Return to sender: the boomerang | SAASTA STEM (Latrell Cameron)
Engineering challenge: traditional methods to solve modern problems | Woodville HS (Siarrah Sinclair, Zakiyah Mueller and Marley Davis-Cameron)
Each of these students designed and presented their activity to multiple other student groups from schools across the state and were able to show how young Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders can be Cultural Innovators in STEM in the future. As part of their roles Siarrah Sinclair, Zakiyah Mueller and Marley Davis-Cameron confidently addressed a room full of almost 1000 people which is a feat that not many our students can lay claim to.
Congratulations to all participants on their participation in this wonderful event, it was and always is an amazing way to see and learn about the cultural knowledge that the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students share during the YASTSA STEM Congress.
