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BU students make special delivery of science to public schools
By Brian Fitzgerald
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At the regional GK-12 meeting's poster session on January 23 (from left): meeting organizer Bennett Goldberg, a CAS physics professor, Kelly Denney (CAS'04), a GK-12 fellow at Boston Latin School, Andrew Walsh (GRS'05), a GK-12 fellow at East Boston High School, and Malik Latif, a physics teacher at East Boston High School. Photo by Kalman Zabarsky |
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One minute you're a graduate student, working on a master's degree in biology. Then, in some sort of weird time warp, you're in a high school classroom with a bunch of teenagers.
It sounds like a dream, but that ringing isn't an alarm clock waking you out of slumber. It's a school bell, and it's time to teach.
Michael Cermak (CAS'04, GRS'06), a fellow in BU's Project STAMP — Science, Technology, and Mathematics Partnerships — is assigned to a 10th-grade biology class at Jeremiah Burke High School in Boston's Dorchester neighborhood. He is one of nine BU graduate students and four undergraduates who are paired with teachers in public school systems in Boston, Chelsea, Quincy, and Newton.
“My specialty is ecology,” says Cermak, “and one of my contributions to the class is helping teach a full unit on ecology, which I've designed to be more appealing to these kids than the average science class. I also assist with daily lessons, and sometimes supplement the curriculum with new and fun lessons that I either create, adapt from the Web, or adapt from colleagues at BU.” Cermak also helps the more advanced high school sophomores with science fair projects after school.
The principal investigator for BU's $1.5 million Project STAMP grant, which is funded by the National Science Foundation's Graduate Teaching Fellows in K-12 (GK-12) program, is CAS Physics Professor Bennett Goldberg. A separate GK-12 initiative at BU, involving 10 additional college students working in public schools, was featured in the September 19, 2003, issue of the B.U. Bridge (www.bu.edu/bridge/archive/2003/09-19/excited.html).
Project STAMP works closely with CityLab, the mobile technology laboratory at the School of Medicine. Co–principal investigators of the grant are Michael Ruane, an ENG professor of electrical and computer engineering, SED Associate Professor Peter Garik, Constance Phillips, a MED assistant research professor of biotechnology, and CityLab Director Donald DeRosa, a MED research assistant professor.
“The philosophy of the GK-12 program nationally is to take graduate students who are in science, math, engineering, and technology degree programs and have them spend time in public schools to help stimulate kids' interest in science,” says Goldberg. “A unique aspect of Project STAMP is our focus on interdisciplinary science. We bring together physicists, chemists, biologists, people in medical sciences, mathematicians, and engineers and get them to help teachers in various school systems.”
Outside organizations involved in Project STAMP are the Boston Museum of Science, the New England Aquarium, the optics company Melles Griot, and the New England Board of Higher Education.
The ultimate goal of the NSF GK-12 program is to improve the awareness and communication skills of the next generation of scientists and engineers by providing them with direct teaching experience in grades K to 12, and in the process, improve the quality of science education at the primary and secondary level in the United States. “The NSF funds 129 GK-12 programs across the country,” Goldberg says. “That represents an investment of about $200 million in the past four years, and the teacher-fellow pairs interact with as many as 100,000 students in grades K to 12. It's a major undertaking.”
On January 23 and 24, BU hosted the nation's first GK-12 regional meeting to exchange ideas. The 150 participants — who included about 60 students from BU, Tufts, UMass-Boston, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Harvard, and Northeastern — were welcomed by Terrence Woodin, the NSF's national GK-12 program officer, at the Photonics Center. Breakout sessions were then held.
“One of the results of the regional meeting,” says Goldberg, “was the creation of an interactive searchable database of more than 50 classroom activities in science, math, engineering, and technology.”
The meeting was also effective “because it allowed us to see a number of different activities being developed at other schools,” says graduate teaching fellow Alexander Mackenzie (ENG'05). “In the breakout sessions we discussed classroom management and the roles of the fellows both inside and outside the classroom.”
Mackenzie works in the Bigelow Middle School in Newton, and is helping expand the school's technology and engineering program by introducing robotics curricula using Lego Mindstorms, which are robots that use a microcomputer, motors, and touch and light sensors to interact with the environment using installed programs. “Lego Mindstorms and robotics in general are useful learning tools because they are highly engaging, hands-on, and familiar to these students,” says Mackenzie. “They provide a great way of introducing problem-visualization and problem-solving techniques.”
Teaching fellow Jeffrey Brock (GRS'07), who is working on a Ph.D. in experimental condensed matter physics, designed a new hands-on fifth-grade physics curriculum with teacher Russell Springer at Cabot Elementary School in Newton. “The curriculum is designed to expose students to the fundamental physics behind electricity, forces, energy, light, and sound,” says Brock. The course he helps teach is loosely centered around the Bohr model of the atom, along with other concepts in quantum mechanics, and they are used to motivate exploration of these topics, as well as to develop a basic understanding of some fundamental ideas in quantum and electromagnetic physics.
Brock sees himself as a “scientist role model” in the classroom. He tries to communicate to students his enthusiasm for science, and he says the eagerness is contagious. “When things are clicking, and the students are excited and really getting it, it's just a blast,” he says. “We're all sad when science time is over.”
However, Brock says that his experience in the classroom is far from easy: “Contrary to what many people think — including me 10 months ago, before I started doing this — teaching is hard. Nobody gets up in front of any age group and shines without a ton of work beforehand. There is a huge amount of prep and planning work that has to be done, or you will crash and burn. I know — I did a few times.”
But Brock has always gotten back on his feet, and his resilience and passion for science have paid off. He points out that his students are developing not only a better understanding of the subject, but also a passion for it, which is the NSF's mission for the GK-12 program. “I've had several parents come up to me privately and tell me that their children, who never appeared to have had any interest in science or technology, come home now raving about what they did that day with Jeff and Mr. Springer,” he says, “and they actually want to do science projects at home with mom and dad.”
27
February 2004
Boston University
Office of University Relations