Joelle dela Paz’s Story
Joelle engaged her daughter Isabella in her classroom activities from an early age. Pictured here at age 5 with her mom, Isabella is now a strong-minded 13-year-old who dreams of becoming an artist. Time will tell. As a kid, Joelle dreamed of becoming a rock star…. And she is one. Just not the kind she imagined.
Joelle dela Paz Speaks STEM and Kids Listen
“Hey, do you want to see something gross?”
This is Joelle dela Paz’s go-to line when she’s grabbing kids’ attention to engage them in the world of science – and it works! Especially when it’s served up with Joelle’s characteristic passion for STEM.
“There’s a fun side to science and teaching science,” says Joelle. “You can’t just teach from a textbook. You’ve got to do something to pull kids in. So if it’s gross or smelly, if it’s fun, if there’s an explosion – you’re speaking their language.”
Joelle also has strong feelings about inclusion in STEM, a philosophy that was sparked by a high school physics teacher who empowered his female students to consider futures in science. Volunteering with Let’s Talk Science was a natural progression and Joelle joined the University of Toronto’s Scarborough site in 2003.
“At my Let’s Talk Science orientation meeting, the coordinators told us to always start a workshop by asking the kids what a scientist looks like. And nine times out of ten, the kids would draw an older man with white hair. Then I’d reveal that I do science too and the kids would say – ‘Wait! What?? You don’t look like Albert Einstein!’ So it was an aha moment when they realized you don’t have to be an old white guy to be a scientist.”
Volunteering with Let’s Talk Science played a big part in Joelle’s decision to go to Teacher's College and teach science full-time. “My most memorable experience with Let’s Talk Science was being part of the group who pioneered the biotechnology demonstration about 20 years ago. I remember one of our first times carrying out that demonstration, the students were so fascinated by every part of it. They had tons of questions about what it was like to do research and how they could get into it too.”
Early in her career, Joelle also had an opportunity to coordinate an intercampus conference for Girls in Science at a private school. She invited female scientists in academia from across Canada to share their research and engage her female-identifying students in quick investigations in molecular biology, environmental chemistry and robotics. Joelle also enjoys the enthusiasm and engagement students demonstrate on class trips to the Ontario Science Centre and she recently arranged a customized field trip to the Toronto Zoo that gave students an Indigenous perspective on North American wildlife.
Joelle is now working with single mothers who are coming back to finish their high school diplomas. “It's so fulfilling to see these young women realize their capabilities and their potential and then realize that there's more out there than just like, OK, yeah, I'm a single mom. But now they're like, I want to be a paramedic, I want to be an engineer, I want to be an aircraft engineer. I'm like, yeah, let's do it!”
Joelle is quick to remind the young women in her sphere of influence, including her 13-year-old daughter Isabella, that they “can STEM”. “I use STEM as a verb,” says Joelle. “So girls who STEM can do physics and math. They can pursue careers that are traditionally thought of as male-dominated. They can think abstractly. There are so many things. Girls can science; girls can math; girls can engineer. All of that!”