With just over 10 hours left in our ScienceBlogs/Donors Choose Blogger Challenge 2007, it's time to think about what happens next. Supporting classroom teachers with your funds is a noble gesture, but it's just a start.
To really get math and science literacy (and enthusiasm) to the levels we'd like to see, your time and personal involvement can do an awful lot. In this post you'll find ideas from ScienceBloggers about how to turn your good intentions into action.
From Mike Dunford at The Questionable Authority:
There are a lot of children in this country who don't have much in the way of opportunity when it comes to learning science, or even learning about why science is important to them. Funding the grassroots-level proposals is a good way to help teachers with the science education part of the problem, but we can do more. In particular, we can talk to the kids directly about science, about why we enjoy it, about why it's important to everyone. With any luck, we might even be able to convince one or two kids that this science thing is something that they really can do.
What I'd like to try to is to get as many scientists, doctors, engineers, science writers - anyone with good scientific knowledge - into classrooms as possible. Wherever possible, I'd like people to try and get into classrooms in underprivileged areas (rural or inner city) where students can particularly benefit from the exposure -- schools where the majority of kids are in the federal free lunch program, and where few will go to college.
Not all that long ago, the proper term for a person who knows enough meteorology to understand why some scientists worry about the effect of increasing sea temperatures on hurricane risks, enough biology to understand the differences between embryonic and adult stem cells, and enough geology to understand the concept of a global petroleum production peak would have been "nerd." Today, the correct term is "informed citizen." It's hard enough to get people, especially kids, to care about that kind of thing under the best of circumstances. If we don't - if we continue to allow public policy on issues like climate change or medical research or whatever else to be shaped by how many people think "liberal" is a bad word, or how many are pissed off at the Republicans for getting us into Iraq - we are, as a species, well and truly screwed. (Note to international readers: no, I'm not that arrogant about America's ability to solve problems. I'm that confident in our ability to cause them.)
It's hard to get kids to care about those kind of things under the best of circumstances, but there are lots of kids who aren't learning under the best of circumstances. They're learning under the worst. They're learning in schools with poor facilities, no money, and going home - in many cases - to situations that are even worse. I don't want to see those kids get locked out from becoming informed, participating citizens, but that's exactly what's happening. I want them to get the chance to hear - to see - that science is something that isn't just for other people. It's something that they can learn about. It's something that they can get interested in. It's something that they should pay attention to, because it's something that's going to affect their lives.
Sandra Porter at Discovering Biology in a Digital World, has been involved in science outreach for almost 20 years and recommends learning about the programs that already exist in your area and figuring out if there are ways that you can work to assist them:
One of the things in our area that works really well is the NW Association for Biomedical Research (NWABR) speaker's bureau.
They recruit scientists and people from local biotech companies to join the bureau, and they gather background info - what would you talk about? what do you do? what experience do you have? where could you go? They may even work with the Washington State Patrol and do background checks. Washington has all kinds of regulations that try to keep pedophiles out of schools.
Then, teachers contact NWABR and find out who can visit classrooms in their area and which topics they could address. NWABR acts as the conduit and sends out the speakers.
I found that this worked really well when I was teaching. We had all kinds of people come in to talk about their experiences. This is nice because the teachers can use this method to supplement their curriculum, not disrupt it.
NWABR also gathers feedback from the talks since we know that speakers who do really well with a college audience might bomb with middle schoolers.
We also have mechanisms, in our state, for scientists to participate in fairs and expos. Expanding Your Horizons is a great example.
From Zuska, a reminder classroom visits aren't the only kind of involvement that helps:
Rather than go to the teachers and say "we want to speak to your kids" it's probably better to find a way to say "we want to do more than just supply funds. What do you need that we can offer? Are visits/talking with kids useful? What other kind of service do you need?" Sometimes what they really need is teacher aide kinds of volunteerism - maybe help with grading exams or homework, or whatever else teacher's aides do. I'm not saying that it's never a good idea to go talk to the kids - obviously I believe in this kind of direct mentoring and organized a lot of it when I worked at K-State through various types of programs. But, this is what everybody always wants to do, and other, less visible, less "exciting" kinds of volunteer work goes undone - because no one realizes it's needed.
Visits are great, but remember too that teachers are under tons of pressure to meet the ever-present dreadful standards, and more and more whatever they do in their classrooms, they need to see how it will directly relate to that need. How will your visit help them meet the standards? Otherwise it takes away precious class time.
Some options:
- After-school programs (doesn't take up class time, or interfere with need to teach to the damn standards) like sponsoring a science club.
- See if the teacher wants help planning a field trip. Do you have contacts within industry or at a university lab? Could you arrange for a class to tour a science-y site, meet some real live scientists and talk with them, and get some swag? Kids absolutely love this and it can be life changing. They see that there are real people doing science, they see them in their work setting, they can start imagining themselves doing it.
- See what is going on already at your university. Is there an outreach program you can become involved in? If you have a women in engineering/women in science program on campus, or a multicultural engineering program, or any other kind of campus outreach group, there may be places that have programs that would just love to have more volunteers for the programs they organize to get kids excited about science. Likewise local Society of Women Engineers and/or Assoc. for Women in Science chapters often organize outreach programs you could become involved in. These programs often have a mission to reach out to underserved communities.
- Volunteer to judge science fairs. Or volunteer to coach kids for science fair projects.
- Volunteer to guide a team of kids through a Future Cities competition.
And more from WEPAN listserv members:
National Girls Collaborative Projecthas a listing of outreach programs for girls- Women in Engineering Organization has such a list but the site is old and may not be up to date
- Engineering Education Service Center has a list of pre-engineering summer camps
- NSF has a list of outreach programs they have funded
If you belong to a professional society (like ACS, APS, APA, AMA, etc.), check its website to see what kind of educational outreach and mentoring activities they've mounted, and who to contact to get involved with them.
From David Ng at The World's Fair:
A repository of available science outreach programs (hosted somewhere central) is a great idea. Nothing like that currently exists, and it would go a long way to publicize programs, discover holes in particular regions, and inspire others to create their own.
We're (in Vancouver) also working on a online hub of science teaching activities, who's main parameters are that they be excellent (i.e. a filter or editorial element is in place), short (maximium of 30 minutes, but preferred time to be around the 10 to 15 minute mark), low low low maintenance, fun to read (as in the activities will be engaging as writing pieces, regardless of the intent of the reader).
If there's anything I've really noticed it's that the most profound moments seem to be when a students gets to come to a lab or research facility. There's a huge disconnect between the concept of "this is science as described in a textbook" and "this is science as in really, this is science."
And, my two cents:
Public schools, especially at the elementary level, seem always to need classroom volunteers to help with math and science activities. Usually the activities are pretty well worked out (in case you were worried that you need lots of early childhood education credits or classroom experience under your belt to be helpful) -- they just need enough grown ups to guide the kids through the activities and help them with their questions. Model enthusiasm and curiosity! When a classroom volunteer says, "I was never good at math or science," the kids take note of this.
If you can't help in the classroom, there may be set-up you can do, ranging from setting up the materials for experiments to collating and stapling the written material for the activities. If you call the school and ask what kind of help you can give to support the math and science instruction, there's an excellent chance that they have a list of options ready to go.
If you're affiliated with or geographically near a university with a math or science teacher training program, get in touch with them and ask about the outreach they may be doing to teachers in the local schools. There may be ways that you can assist these outreach efforts -- although they may involve "behind the scenes" labor like assembling kits for lab activities or bundling manipulatives for math activities.
You've heard this before, but Margaret Mead said it so well that I have to quote her:
"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."
What makes ScienceBlogs readers powerful agents of change is not that they can pool their money to directly fund a passel of classroom projects, although that certainly helps. What makes you powerful is that you give a damn, and you're willing to take your smarts, your enthusiasm, and your vision of how things should be to the streets.
If you have other suggestions or resources we should know about, spill them in the comments.
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WORST SCIENCE JOBS
ORANGUTAN-PEE COLLECTOR
Their work is noninvasive--for the apes, that is . . . "Have I been pissed on? Yes," says anthropologist Cheryl Knott of Harvard University. Knott is a pioneer of "noninvasive monitoring of steroids through urine sampling." Translation: Look out below! For the past 11 years, Knott and her colleagues have trekked into Gunung Palung National Park in Borneo, Indonesia, in search of the endangered primates. Once a subject is spotted, they deploy plastic sheets like a firemen's rescue trampoline and wait for the tree-swinging apes to go see a man about a mule. For more pee-catching precision, they attach bags to poles and follow beneath the animals. "It's kind of gross when you get hit, but this is the best way to figure out what's going on in their bodies," Knott says.
SEMEN WASHERS
It's a job that separates the boys from the men, OK, OK, their real job title is usually something like "cryobiologist" or "laboratory technician," but at sperm banks around the country, they are known as semen washers. "Every time I interview someone I make sure I ask them, 'Do you know you'll be working with semen?' " says Diana Schillinger, the Los Angeles lab manager at the country's largest sperm bank, California Cryobank. Let's start at the beginning. Laboriously prescreened "donors" emerge from a so-called collection room that is stocked with girlie mags and triple-X DVDs. They hand over their deposit, get their $75, and leave. The semen washers take the seminal goo and place a sample under the microscope for a sperm count. Next comes the washing. The techs spin the sample in a centrifuge to separate the "plasma" from the motile cells. Then they add a preservative, and it's off to the freezer, where it can stay for 20 years. Or not. Thanks to semen washers (and in vitro fertilization), more than 250,000 babies have been delivered in the U.S. since 1995.
"The hardest part is explaining it to friends," Schillinger says. "But we do have stories." Like what? "Like the donor who was in the room for the longest time. We had a big discussion about who was going to check on him. Turns out he thought he had to fill up the entire specimen cup."
MANURE INSPECTOR
The smell is just the start of the nastiness. Almost 1.5 billion tons of manure are produced annually by animals in this country--90 percent of it from cattle. That's the same weight as 14,432 Nimitz-class aircraft carriers. You get the point: It's a load of crap. And it's loaded with nasty contaminants like campylobacter (the number-one cause of acute gastroenteritis in the U.S.), salmonella (the number-two cause) and E.coli 0157:H7, which can cause kidney failure in children and painful, bloody diarrhea in everybody else.
Farmers fertilize their fields with manure, but if the excrement is rife with E.coli, then so will be the vegetables. Luckily for us, researchers at the University of Georgia's Center for Food Safety are knee-deep in figuring out how to eliminate these bacteria from our animals, their poop and our food. But to develop techniques to neutralize the nasty critters, they must go to the source.
"We have to wade through a lot of poop," concedes Michael Doyle, the center's director. "If you want to get the manure, you've got to grab it. Even when you wear gloves, the fecal smell tends to get embedded in your skin." Hog poop smells the worst, Doyle says, but it's chicken poop's chokingly high ammonia content that brings tears to researchers' eyes.
FLATUS ODOR JUDGE
Odor judges are common in the research labs of mouthwash companies, where the halitosis-inflicted blow great gusts of breath in their faces to test product efficacy. But Minneapolis gastroenterologist Michael Levitt recently took the job to another level--or, rather, to the other end. Levitt paid two brave souls to indulge repeatedly in the odors of other people's farts. (Levitt refuses to divulge the remuneration, but it would seem safe to characterize it thusly: Not enough.) Sixteen healthy subjects volunteered to eat pinto beans and insert small plastic collection tubes into their anuses (worst-job runners-up, to be sure). After each "episode of flatulence," Levitt syringed the gas into a discrete container, rigorously maintaining fart integrity. The odor judges then sat down with at least 100 samples, opened the caps one at a time, and inhaled robustly. As their faces writhed in agony, they rated just how noxious the smell was. The samples were also chemically analyzed, and--eureka!--Levitt determined definitively the most malodorous component of the human flatus: hydrogen sulfide.
DYSENTERY STOOL-SAMPLE ANALYZER
In the early '80s, Virginia Tech profs Tracy Wilkins and David Lyerly studied the diarrhea-causing microbe Clostridium difficile in sample after sample after sample of loose stool from the disease's victims. They became such crack dysentery docs that they launched a company, Techlab, dedicated to making stool-analysis kits. Today, Techlab employs 40 people, 19 of whom spend their working hours opening sloppy stool canisters and analyzing their contents in order to test the effectiveness of the company's kits. You'd have to have a pretty good sense of humor, right? Well, fortunately, they do. The Techlab Web site sells T-shirts with cartoons on the front (two flies hover over two blobs of dung; one says to the other, "Pardon me, is this stool taken?") and the company motto on the back: "Techlab: #1 in the #2 Business!"
BARNYARD MASTURBATOR
Researchers who want animal sperm --to study fertility or for artificial insemination--have a suite of attractive options: They can ram an electric probe up an animal's rectum, shove an artificial vagina onto the animal's penis, or simply do it the old-fashioned way--manual stimulation. The first option, electroejaculation, uses a priapic rectal probe to send electricity pulsing through the animal's nether regions. "All the normal excitatory signals that stimulate ejaculation, like touch, sight, sound and smell, can be replaced with the current from the probe," says Trish Berger, professor of animal science at the University of California, Davis. "It's fascinating. Of course, this is a woman talking." Electroejaculation generally requires anesthetizing the animal and is typically used on zoo dwellers. The other two methods--the artificial vagina, or AV, and the good old hand--require that animals be trained to the procedure. The AV--a large latex tube coated with warm lubricant --is used primarily to get sperm from dairy bulls (considered the most ornery and dangerous of bovines). The bull gets randy with a steer; when he mounts the steer with his forelegs, a brave technician, AV in hand, insinuates himself between the two aroused beasts and deftly redirects the bull penis into the mock genitalia, which he must then hold tight while the bull orgasms. (Talk about bull riding!) Three additional technicians attempt to ensure this (fool)hardy soul's safety by anchoring themselves to restraining ropes attached to a ring in the bull's nose. Alas, this isn't always absolutely effective: Everyone who's wielded an AV has had at least one close call, and more than a few have been sent to the hospital. The much safer "digital pressure" is used mostly with pigs, who are trained from an early age to mount a small bench while the researcher reaches around with a gloved hand and provides appropriate pleasure--er, pressure.
CARCASS CLEANER
Natural history museums display clean white skeletons or neatly stuffed animals, but what their field biologists drag in are carcasses flush with rotting flesh. Each museum's taxidermist has his own favorite technique for tidying things up. University of California, Berkeley, zoologist Robert Jones swears by his strain of flesh-eating buffalo-hide beetles and has no problem reaching his bare hand into a drawer to pull out a rancid shrew skeleton swarming with thousands of these quarter-inch bugs. Jeppe Møhl at the University of Copenhagen Zoological Museum deposits sperm whales and dolphins into vast empty tanks and lets nature take its course. And then there's the boiling method, useful for chemically preserved samples that bugs won't touch--an approach favored by archaeologist Sandra Olsen, who has done her own skeleton work. She recalls a particularly vivid experience boiling down hyena paws: "It felt like inhaling the gases would literally kill us." Nah. It merely gave her a lung infection.
I have no idea of the huge debate or ongoing 'crisis' (wonder if thats the right word) of supporting science and math education over there in the US. Where I live, parents are usually pushing their kids to opt for a science related field after graduating from school..provided you have a basic aptitude for science.
And being a student myself, here's my two cents :
At school, I always felt that nobody asked or encouraged us to really ask questions. Only after I came to college did I really start asking questions. What kids really need to discover and start thinking on their own, is, I think, looking at certain things, any natural phenomena, say a rainbow and then ask questions. Where did it come from ? How is it formed ? When you have questions in your head, getting answers is only a matter of time with the vast amount of resources that the Internet provides.
The other thing that came to my mind was something Zuska has already pointed out : sponsoring a science club. (Or the likes) I've always thought that its always much more fun quicker to understand a concept and see that, "Yes, this does hold true" when you can actually visualize it right there in front of you. This can range from a wide range of things involving elaborate models or even simple colored threads to illustrate say the structure of DNA or the like. You get the idea. But seeing things visually happening right there in front of you leaves a greater impact than any book can ever leave.
I'm a microbiology undergrad, recently several of us met with local parents and elementary school students about the science fair next April. We set up several tables and walked the kids through various experiments, got them to ask a bunch of questions (about anything they might be curious), how to put those questions into a testable format, we let them know how to compile their data, and did a mini experiment all the way through as a demonstration. It was nice to see the parental involvement, but really, the questions from the kids were inspiring. One third grader (without parental prompting) wanted to know if he could measure "how much air different plants make." That was so awesome.