The girls at the LitShop know how to handle hefty power tools, caulk guns and mallets like pros.
The group of about a dozen middle and high school age girls have spent months sharpening up their skills as they finish their miniature golf hole for the annual Golf the Galleries exhibition at the Sheldon. It took several months to design and build. Now they’re ready to show it off.
“Building everything is like super duper hard to do, but it’s all worth it when you get to see everything that’s finished,” said 13-year-old Hanaan Pettus. “Especially with the golf hole that we’re building. The reason that I keep coming back even though it’s so hard to do is that when you’re done you get to go play the golf hole that you made. It’s super rewarding.”
It’s the third time the group has entered one of their one of a kind golf holes into the exhibit. This time they pulled out all of the stops to build this custom L-shape skate rink themed mini golf hole.
There’s a giant eye-catching roller skate that is the star of the show sitting on a sleek wood panel floor that mirrors a real deal roller rink. The specially ordered black and neon designed carpet highlights its unique '90s flare. The girls even built a massive concession stand with fake candy, popcorn and other treats.
Kelli Best-Oliver, the founder and executive director of the LitShop, said this is her way of getting more girls excited about science, technology, engineering and math—also known as STEM. For years, women and especially women of color have fallen behind men in the STEM world. But she’s working to change those odds by giving them exposure to her woodshop and other makerspaces while building up their confidence one tool and project at a time.
“It’s probably my favorite thing when a brand new kid comes in and we immediately can put them onto some kind of tool they’ve never tried before that might be really intimidating,” Best-Oliver said. “They do something. They use it successfully and you can see it. You can see exactly how their faces light up.”
After more than a decade of teaching in public schools in St. Louis, Best-Oliver created LitShop out of a necessity in 2019. The after-school program's home base is tucked away in the Botanical Heights neighborhood in its very own woodshop. It’s a space for girls to improve their literacy skills and get hands-on exposure to the world of shop class. She said some schools don’t have the resources to offer it to students.
“It is out of their frame of reference or even conceptualization that tools they see being used by adults is something that they can safely do on their own,” Best-Oliver said. “They can use those skills, use those experiences and apply that to a whole bunch of other projects.”
Girls just want to build
There has been an uptick in recent years though. A 2023 report from the Gallup and Walton Family Foundation, noted that 75% of Generation Z youth were interested in pursuing a STEM career. However, only 29% selected it as the first career choice. It pointed to a lack of access and exposure that led to this disconnect.
“We know that there’s tons of opportunities for economic mobility within that kind of career cluster,” Best-Oliver said. “We also know that if we look at it from a more technical or STEM perspective, less than 25% of youth maker space experiences are experienced by girls and that falls off dramatically by the 8th grade.”
LitShop has been intentional about prioritizing middle and high school age girls to improve those odds by using a hands-on approach through construction as a gateway.
Taubah Pettus alongside her younger sisters Hanaan and Maryam have all since taken up an interest in woodshop and design. Taubah, 16, has been with the program since its inception.
“I like the wood shop classes especially, because I find that it allows me to apply my interests in math and actually get practical use out of it instead of just sitting and solving hypothetical questions all day,” Pettus said. “I get to actually play around with my math.”
It’s not something she’s considering doing professionally at this time, but she wants to continue it as a hobby. That sentiment is not uncommon. Tessa Link, 14, wants to be a surgeon one day. While she’s encouraged by the progress women have made in the STEM field, she said there’s still a lot more that needs to be done.
“There is still [a] lack of women in fields like construction and architecture and engineering,” Link said. “I really think it’s important for young girls to get educated in this field because it’s not very common even in this time.”
Link joined thanks to her mom’s encouragement, adding it was something she wishes she had when she was her age.
A new generation
Jenni Byrne-Mosley, an instructor at LitShop agrees.
“Teaching a 10-year-old how to use power tools is one of the great joys of working here,” Byrne-Mosley said. “That was not something available to me even growing up in the '90s. I learned from my dad’s garage. Not from a space like this.”
By day, she works for an architectural woodworking company in St. Louis. She hopes that she too can encourage more girls to pursue a career in STEM by seeing someone they know succeed.
“[It] shows these girls, these kids that there are many different ways that you can work in construction,” Byrne-Mosley said. “You can’t be it if you can’t see it kind of aspect of things. You can take an interest in what we do here and you can make so much from it.”
Historically, women especially in marginalized groups are underrepresented in some STEM fields. Best-Oliver said even if progress is slow to come, she and her team are preparing the girls for the real world by giving them the skills and confidence they need to thrive.
“Even if they’re entering an all-male workforce, they have rights,” Best-Oliver said. “They have worth. They have value. And we’re hopeful that the more girls we can get to enter the workforce with that mindset the more workplaces can change from the bottom up.”
Golf the Galleries is open until Aug. 11 at the Sheldon.
