Meet Meagan Naraine & Tamir Mickens | Science Educators & Curriculum Developers

We had the good fortune of connecting with Meagan Naraine & Tamir Mickens and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Meagan | Tamir, what do you want your legacy to be?
Culturally Relevant Science wants its legacy to be that it reinvented STEM education to be more inclusive of underrepresented students. This will lead to more of these students truly believing that STEM is for them, and thus encouraging more of them to become real-world scientists.

Alright, so for those in our community who might not be familiar with your business, can you tell us more?
Culturally Relevant Science is a nonprofit organization dedicated to creating innovative, accessible, and inclusive STEM education for all students, especially those from underrepresented communities. We believe that every student deserves to see themselves represented in STEM, so that their classroom engagement, academic achievement, and pursuit of STEM careers will increase.

In our 10+ years of teaching science in low-income public schools throughout Atlanta, we noticed a severe disengagement between our Black and Brown students and their district’s curriculum. This was because these students saw little to no representation of themselves in the lessons being taught to them. How can we expect them to be interested in learning STEM and become confident enough to pursue a career in it, if this is the case?

This is why it is our mission to change this. Our team develops K-12 STEM curriculum that is not only rigorous and engaging, but also culturally relevant. All of our resources, whether it be an animated video lesson, live-action lab video, or traditional classroom slideshow, intentionally includes representations of various races, socioeconomic statuses, genders, and sexual orientations. To really catch a glimpse of what we do, check out our most popular video lesson on YouTube “Lab Safety DOs and DONTs”!

Currently, our organization has acquired $50,000+ in grant funding, served 10,000+ teachers and students, and sponsored $8,000+ worth of exposure experiences. We got this far by leveraging expertise from other education innovators and their organizations. Both of us are merely science educators, with no entrepreneurial or nonprofit experience. To fill this gap, we throw ourselves into fellowships that provide us the coursework and mentorship we lack. Ones like Teach For America’s Social Innovation Fellowship, 4Point0 Schools’ Tiny Fellowship, Pro Bono Partnerships of Atlanta’s Black-Led Nonprofit Legal Bootcamp, and Georgia State University’s Main Street Entrepreneurs Seed Fund have each contributed to elevating us to next stages of our venture.

Of course this process is not easy when your two-man team is still teaching full-time to pay the bills. So how do we find the time to work our jobs, do all of this nonprofit stuff (like write grants, create digital content, participate in fellowships) AND live our personal lives? It’s really all about building a team that works, and usually a team that works is one where its members have completely different talents and skills. Tamir is the creative tech guy. He taught himself video animation and production, and is the brain behind all of our digital content. Meagan is the administration queen. She taught herself grant writing, accounting, and legal to keep the organization up and running. We operate in separate spheres and trust each other to handle any task in that sphere. It took a lot of meetings, hard conversations, and accountability, but it is finally where it needs to be.

One major lesson we have learned along the way is charging customers what we are truly worth. I’m sure it happens often where organizations are excited to get their first paying customer, and essentially charge severely lower than what they should have charged. We did this recently. Once we talked to a coach in one of the fellowships we participated in, we learned exactly how to calculate our price value – which was incredibly higher than what we thought. But you cannot dwell on the fact that you undercharged yourself. Entrepreneurship is all about learning along the way. Sometimes big mistakes have to happen for you to truly learn what not to do.

Culturally Relevant Science wants the world to know that STEM is for everyone! Eventually our organization will be the country’s leading digital learning platform that shows this. Until then, we hope you view our free resources for teachers and students on our YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/@CR_SCI) and supplemental learning hub (https://www.crsci.org/learninghub).

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
Ideally, I would want it to be summer time, and I would take my best friend up to Helen, GA to go tubing down the Chattahoochee River. We would also have a boat rental day on Lake Allatoona. We are suckers for game bars, so we would definitely go to Painted Duck or Slingshot. We would probably visit Decatur’s hole-in-the-wall spot Falafel King to eat ramen and falafel pitas. Most of the days we would probably hook up our hammock in Piedmont Park, set up a speaker, spread a blanket, and play frisbee.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
We would like to dedicate our shoutout to our Teach For America family – Samantha Lurie from Show Me The World Project (https://www.showmetheworldproject.org), Claudine Miles & Kimberlie Milton from Restore More (https://www.werestoremore.com), Raioni Madison from 3D Grils, Inc. (https://www.3dgirlsinc.org), and Jasmine Newson. Without the support, love, and mentorship from these educational innovators, Culturally Relevant Science would not be where it is today. Thank you all for adopting us into your family!

Website: www.crsci.org

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cr_sci/

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/crsci

Twitter: https://twitter.com/cr_sci

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/culturallyrelevantscience/

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@CR_SCI