NSF Awards: 0962804
The Hands On Science Teaching (HOST) Labs offer a unique opportunity for university students to have a hands-on teaching experience with middle school students. At California State University, East Bay (CSUEB), the course is specifically designed for anyone who may have an interest in pursuing a teaching career – either a multiple subjects or single subject science credential. The courses are designed with the intention of deepening scientific understanding while practicing effective, hands-on science instruction aligned with the Next Generation Science Standards. The university students serve as “science guides” helping middle school students to explore scientific concepts. During the visit, middle school students rotate in small groups to each of the six lab stations to get a hands-on experience that introduces a foundational concept in science. Each lab activity has been specifically designed by CSUEB science faculty to provide a rigorous academic activity with an inquiry-based approach. Our goal is for students to leave the HOST labs with a deeper understanding of scientific concepts and a positive attitude about science. During the visit, students have lunch on campus and take a campus tour. An added benefit of the HOST Lab is that students from low-performing and high-needs schools are brought to campus to demystify the campus environment. The experience encourages middle school students to envision going to college and studying a STEM field as an achievable goal.
Danika LeDuc
Interim Associate Dean
We hope you enjoy the video highlighting this two-year old program at CSUEB – giving middle school children and their teachers a hands-on science opportunity on a college campus and college students the chance to learn science through teaching. We are happy to answer questions you may have about our program, discuss the positive impacts the program is having on and off campus, and discuss hurdles we have overcome!
Brian Drayton
An engaging video, and interesting project. can you say more about the pedagogical coaching that the college students get? Are there particular things about the “teacher” role that they find hard? Surprising?
Danika LeDuc
Interim Associate Dean
Hi Brian,
We were lucky enough to hire Megan as a Program Coordinator. Megan has taught middle school and college level science and has a Master’s in Education. She has also taught Methods courses and supported student teachers and others. When she isn’t the instructor of the course, she assists the faculty with this part. Since the program is just finishing its second year, we are constantly revising. This quarter, Megan is teaching and is giving feedback via a rubric on her observations. She may be able to share more details of this with you in her posts. They also do peer reviews of each other when they practice and debrief after each field trip. The schedule is practice with peers, field trip 1, and then field trip 2, so there are cycles in which to improve.
Our students are surprised by how tiring it is to teach, the level of difficulty of the questions that the students pose, and how knowledgeable and prepared you have to be just to run a 15 minute activity.
Megan Jensen
HOST Lab Coordinator
I think they also find it surprising how much fun they have teaching! Teaching is a new experience for many of the students and they start off pretty nervous. By the second field trip, you can already see a shift in their comfort to adapt activities and interact with the students. By the end of the quarter, students have more ownership of the activities and are enjoying themselves. Many of our students have taken the class more than once.
Jeffery Seitz
Professor
Hi Brian,
I taught the Earth Science HOST course. In my course, we spent some time learning about NGSS and Common Core. To prepare the college students to develop an activity to teach to middle school students visiting campus, we used a gradual release model where the initial lessons at the beginning of the term were heavily scaffolded. After each field trip, we had structured debriefs where the college students discussed their observations, successes and challenges. We gradually reduced the scaffold so that by the end of the term, the college students were choosing new concepts to teach and co-developed their own lessons.
One thing that the college students found challenging was a lack of science content knowledge. We spent time with them developing their content knowledge. I find that teaching is one of the best ways to learn something new, and by the end of the term, the college students felt confident and owned the science content.
Jorge Solis
Assistant professor
Thank you for sharing your project! What a great way to promote science teacher development and K-12 science learning. I was wondering how the Lab lessons or the HOST approach supports or addresses equitable engagement by students in these activities?
Danika LeDuc
Interim Associate Dean
Hi Jorge,
Thank you for your excellent question. We are still working on this and it is a major element of our debriefs. Since the students are in small groups, we aim at every station to have every child actively participating with their hands and minds. Our CSUEB students are encouraged to attempt to elicit participation from all the children. I think in terms of diversity, we are lucky in that CSUEB is one of the most diverse Universities in the country and our science guides reflect that. With respect to English-language learners, all our stations have lots of visuals and all are hands on, which I think is a more accessible way of learning science for most students. All the children have a mini science notebook to take down data, answer questions, draw pictures, etc…
Our most challenging field trip was a group of hearing-impaired students who also had other cognitive challenges. We were able to staff with interpreters, but I have to admit we were not able to fully engage all of these students. This is something we will continue to work towards and would be happy to have suggestions!
Jorge Solis
Assistant professor
Thank you Danika! I lived in RWC just across the bay for most of my life and can see how valuable this project will be to the greater Bay Area K-12 school community.
Marcelo Worsley
Assistant Professor
This is a great opportunity for students at all levels (K-12) and university. Are you all also able to partner with the middle schools to provide additional activities that the teachers and students can use to continue exploring the ideas that were introduced during the visit?
Dawn O'Connor
Director/ Co-I
Hi Marcello,
Many of the teachers that attend the HOST Labs with their students are also teachers in our NSF professional development project. The concepts that the students experience in the HOST lab often are the same as that explored in the summer institutes for the teachers. This experience provides both an opportunity to extend the learning beyond the “fieldtrip” and to reach out for additional ideas from the HOST faculty.
Michel DeGraff
Professor
Dear Presenters, Such a rich and enriching project. Congratulations. Being at MIT where our motto is “Mens et Manus” (= “Minds & Hearts”) which is now being complemented by “Cor” (= “Heart”) and by “Mundus” (“World”), I was particularly heartened by Danika’s comments about “every child actively participating with their hands and minds” and that your “science guides reflect that [diversity at CSUEB]”. So I’d like to ask more about the “heart” and “world” components of the project if any.
About science with a “heart” and in the “world,” one could consider the marriage between science and the liberal arts, a marriage that may enhance science students’ civic participatory readiness whereby students can also learn the political bases of choices related to science that have impact on their communities and on equity in the distribution of goods. This marriage of STEM and the Humanities can be made to relate to hot-button topics like climate change, the inclusion of under-represented communities, environmental issues and the impact thereof of social justice.
Given CSUEB’s diversity, I’d love to hear your thoughts about these issues and whether/how they are integrated in your project.
(As a reference on STEM and participatory readiness, I can recommend a recent provocative article by Danielle Allen on “What is education for?” to which I contributed a commentary: http://bostonreview.net/forum/danielle-allen-wh... )
Megan Jensen
HOST Lab Coordinator
Dear Michael,
Yes, we try to incorporate elements of environmentalism and social justice into the activities when the themes allow. We are currently in the midst of our biology course and starting to teach the activities related to global climate change. One of the stations is “What’s Your Footprint?”. Students answer some questions about their personal choices to determine “how many Earths” it would take to sustain their lifestyle if everyone on the planet were to do the same. We look at data from around the world and compare CO2 emissions for students to understand global trends, and share pictures from “Material World: A Global Family Portait” by Peter Menzel to help students make connections.
Similarly, we incorporate alternative energy sources into our physics activities and groundwater contamination into our earth science activities. We want to provide students with context to understand the science and how it is relevant to the world they live in.
Thanks for the great question!
Michel DeGraff
Professor
Wow, Megan, this is wonderful! And thank you for such a detailed and heartening response. Now I need to go lok up Peter Menzel’s “Global family portait” (beautiful title!)
I’m thinking, again, about the relation (the “marriage”) between the teaching of STEM and the promotion of civic education toward political action that’s informed by findings such as yours related to “footprints.” Do you and your students make a link between “personal choices” and political action—-in the spirit of STEM informing participatory readiness in the political sphere? Environmental issues are certainly a great context for making such a link, especially as we think about those in power who still deny the reality (and the science) of climate change.
Again, great work!!!
Danika LeDuc
Interim Associate Dean
Dear Michael, Thanks for your insight – I must have had MIT’s motto in my head as a graduate of that institution. We have been meeting with faculty from other departments to see how this program fits more broadly into a liberal studies education. Our University is also going for overlays in general education – in social justice, sustainability, and diversity – as we move from a quarter to semester system in 2018. In the semester format, there will be some room for exploring these connections more deeply.
Michel DeGraff
Professor
Danika & team, I wish you all the very best with these next steps, fitting your program more broadly with the Humanities. One thing I’ve recently experimented with, in one of my classes, is to have students make some of their findings or reflections available, in an attractive way, via social media, especially when these bear on social-justice or political issues. My class is a “Communication Intensive” class, and it seemed appropriate to have students explore social media as part of their Communications-related requirement. Actually this is very much in the spirit of this NSF Video Showcase. Perhaps this is something that you too will find helpful in your project. What do you think?
Danika LeDuc
Interim Associate Dean
Thank you so much, Michel. That is a really interesting idea, and one that I admittedly had not considered. The students currently maintain their reflections in notebooks, but maybe some of this could be moved to a more public space and in different ways.
Further posting is closed as the showcase has ended.