Friday March 11, 2016 was job shadowing day at Microsoft for Boston Public School students. I signed up to participate in the job shadow experience because I love to introduce students to my work in technology. I think STEM educational programs are critically important. Because my daughter is 6, I’ve focused on elementary school educational opportunities in STEM and hadn’t yet had the chance to work with older kids. I was matched up with James and Billy, two seniors from East Boston High.
We began with a group overview of the roles of the participating Microsoft employees, then paired off and began with individual meetings. I shared a short video of my project and explained how to set up a machine learning experiment.
I attended my team’s scrum meeting via Skype in my office, and the students got to hear the day’s progress, roadblocks, and next steps. Then we went directly to a meeting about our backup strategies and options. After the meeting ended, I was impressed with how much the students had picked up on during our meeting.
We ended the brief shadow with a group lunch. I’m looking forward to participating in the next event!
