Hi, Sara-
We partner with our local Housing Authority and Voluntary Action Center to provide scholarships, and also place a listing with our community’s summer science camp guide. We have built up a reputation over the past 7 years, and so we have parents (and grandparents) calling us to find out dates for the next camp by January! Word of mouth has worked extremely well for us.

We focus on physical science, since research shows this is typically the area in which elementary teachers are least prepared. When we were a K6 program, we had a new physical science topic from the NSES each year. In this project, we focused on grade 3, then 4, then 5 in consecutive years, so we chose topics that aligned with the NGSS in consultation with our district partners.

Hi, Susan-
This would definitely be worthwhile for us to study more systematically— from our prior state-funded iteration of the project, we have lots of anecdotal evidence about how teachers across different schools/districts have paired up to attend other workshops, present at NSTA conferences, meet weekly to co-plan their science lessons, and support implementing school science nights. We have an annual ‘alumni workshop’ held in conjunction with our state science teachers’ association as well, and invite past participants to bring a friend. This gives them a way to both reconnect and build that network.
In terms of the current NSF funded work, we just wrapped up work with our 2nd cohort (4th grade) and will begin working with our final cohort (5th grade) in just a few weeks!

Hi, Victor-
You picked up on an important part of the project— putting teachers in the position of learner. This is a very difficult shift, as teachers are accustomed to always ‘thinking like a teacher’— and many programs engage them in student curricula. One key difference in our project is that we utilize a physics curriculum that models the same pedagogy we teach them, but that is written to meet their needs as adult learners (ie, they aren’t asked to ‘play elementary students’). Teachers find themselves feeling quite vulnerable during this process, and as they work together in teams, they build quite a bit of trust in each other through this shared experience. They realize the benefits of supporting one another, and ways their colleagues can contribute to their own understanding. Teachers embrace these approaches both because they experience how their own learning was impacted, but also because they get to see these approaches work with students in week 2.
To address your second question, we found that the networks and connections grew much more organically among teachers who self-selected to attend our first iteration of workshops; these folks had the opportunity to return each year, and often talked their colleagues into joining them. Since we have developed a research design that limits participation to partner schools and specific grade levels each year (to better help us understand student impacts and the contribution of the practicum to teacher learning), we’ve found that to be occurring in a slightly different way. While volunteer participants may not be the best for a clean quasi-experimental research design, we’ve realized that a context like that offers different affordances for building community networks among teachers.

Thank you for your response, Deborah! It really underscores the strengths of your approach, like being organic and having teachers think like students.

Thanks, Lee!

Hi, Karen-
We currently work with a mixture of urban/rural/suburban school districts including St. Louis, Normandy, Columbia, Fulton, and Independence— within these districts we also have Title I school partners.
We are measuring impacts on teacher content knowledge, pedagogical knowledge, and classroom practices (PCK)— we are also measuring student impacts in the final year (grade 5 is when our state tests) as a function of how many years students were taught by QuEST-participating teachers.

Thanks Deborah!

Thanks, Hannah! We hope you will come to our alumni workshop this summer! You can find more info on our website!

In our first iteration of the program, yes— we had teachers who would work toward building a ‘critical mass’ within their school by bringing along colleagues in subsequent years.
We do a series of 4 Saturday follow-up sessions during the academic year, and also visit teachers classrooms to observe & support their efforts.

Thanks so much, Betsy!

As Nicole in our video mentioned, teaching is often an isolated task— the teachers in our program have provided us with feedback that the opportunity to work with teachers from other schools and districts (cross-pollination, so to speak) allows them to bring in new ideas, share resources, and compare approaches. During week 2, the collaboration on translating what they learned, as adults, into age-appropriate experiences for their own students allows them to draw on each other’s expertise— new ideas for engineering design tasks, projects, etc. are contributed to support the developing conceptual storyline.

Still proudly wearing the T-shirt eight years later – from my first of three summers in QUEST’s 80-hour professional development opportunity. Cognitive dissonance, experienced the first week as a learner, became our new and best teacher, for we knew we were on the brink of insight and real understanding. Teaching the summer school program the second week, in small groups with colleague support, afforded the opportunity to witness students’ misconceptions clear and real comprehension unfold! Those early QUESTORS grew to love science and are now entering college – many in science related fields!

What a great update, Anne! I hope we’ll see you at this year’s alumni workshop— more info on the QuEST site!

We are so grateful for the community support to allow us to offer the teaching practicum for teachers!

We have so appreciated our continued collaboration with you, Maria! Thanks for being willing to co-present at NSTA this year!

Thanks, Nancy!