Our iGEM team continued the tradition of elementary outreach this year by volunteering our time twice a week to tutor our elementary school’s science olympiad team. We taught and answered questions on the basics of biology while helping them to prepare for the competition, as well as introducing them to a few upper level concepts as well. We talked to them about Synthetic Biology, and the relation of DNA to this particular field of science, hoping to build an interest at a younger age than we were exposed. We placed an emphasis on STEM as a whole, encouraging all of the kids we tutored to try their best in each of the subjects. We noticed a lack of enthusiasm for each of these subjects, so we shared our personal experiences of love for each of the fields, and also tried to answer general questions they had about any of the subjects.
