Every tooth has a job. Incisors cut, canines tear, molars grind — and understanding that structure is the first step toward understanding how the choices we make affect it. With support from Delta Dental of Minnesota, educators in the Museum’s Kitty Andersen Youth Science Center (KAYSC) built hands-on activities for elementary and middle schoolers to explore the connection between everyday habits and the health of our teeth and gums.
During the school year, KAYSC educators host a free, biweekly Saturday program during which students drop in for six hours of STEM activities (and a light breakfast and lunch, too!). It’s a chance for students to work side-by-side with educators, scientists, and community members to see how STEM solves real-world problems. Whether they’re diving into biological sciences, environmental science, media and tech, or engineering, our Design Team Plus program gets students to try a little bit of everything. The curriculum changes quarterly, so they’re always discovering something new.
For middle schoolers, the program went a step further. KAYSC youth didn’t just learn about oral health — they helped build something with it. Working alongside educators, they shaped a new anti-vaping curriculum, drawing on their own understanding of oral health, their communication skills, and their lived experience to create resources meant to educate and empower their peers.
The curriculum digs into real biology (how nicotine affects teeth, gums, and oral tissue), public health (how communities organize to reduce tobacco use), and something the museum calls a STEM Justice approach — the idea that access to accurate health information is itself a form of health equity, and that understanding the science behind a product like vaping is what makes it possible to make an informed choice about it.
Youth also got to see where that science leads as a career. Through a connection provided by Delta Dental, middle schoolers visited Hennepin Healthcare’s Black Youth with Stethoscopes event, where they met professionals working in oral surgery and other health fields — turning the abstract idea of STEM jobs in oral health into a room full of people doing them.
While students were initially really reserved during Hennepin Healthcare’s Black Youth with Stethoscopes event, the atmosphere shifted as they began to see themselves represented in the healthcare professionals around them. Through hands-on exploration of dental careers, abstract concepts turned into tangible possibilities. One participant shared that the experience made a career as a dental hygienist feel like a real, reachable goal.
