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Hands-On Science Makes News in Eugene
Vol. 11, No. 2, Fall/Winter 1999
When a story about science class makes the front page of the local newspaper, you know
that something exciting is going on.
That’s what happened in Eugene, Oregon, shortly after the introduction of the Science and Technology for Children (STC) curriculum. Page 1
of the September 18, 1997, edition of The Register--Guard featured an article
titled "Kids Dig into Science Projects." Reporter Paul Neville was inspired to
write the feature after hearing glowing reports about science from his own child, an
elementary student in Eugene. As he would soon discover, introducing STC in the classroom
was the tip of the iceberg. Underneath it lays months of planning.
"Our decision to adopt STC would never have worked if we had not first gone
through a professional development program. We wanted to help our teachers learn science
and learn about teaching science," says Jill Baxter. That professional development
program was supported by a grant awarded to the Eugene School District 4-J by the National
Science Foundation (NSF) in 1994. Baxter directs the project, which is called Integrating
Science Concepts (ISC).
To start things off, 80 teachers were selected to take part in an intensive
professional development program. These teachers were to serve as a core group of
advocates for systemic change in elementary science.
Choosing a science curriculum
With a growing group of teachers knowledgeable and enthusiastic about teaching science,
the next challenge was to find effective inquiry-centered curriculum materials.
Five core science curricula, including STC, were selected for review. To prepare for
the process, Baxter and Project Assistant Angie Ruzicka created a curriculum analysis tool
that blended recommendations from the National Research Council’s National Science
Education Standards and the Benchmarks for Science Literacy of the American Association
for the Advancement of Science in their own understanding of student needs and district
priorities.
"Our goal was to create a tool that represented national benchmarks honestly but
also communicated clearly to teachers," says Ruzicka. The tool was tested and revised
three times before being finalized.
The review took place during "Savvy Science Saturday" in January 1997. Thirty
teachers, all members of the core ISC group, participated. The teachers worked in pairs,
and each pair examined two or three topics.
A "bottom-up" consortium
Before a new curriculum could be selected, ISC staff needed to devise a strategy to
involve teachers districtwide. "Eugene is very decentralized," explains Baxter.
"If we wanted to introduce a kit-based science program, we knew that we had to
resolve issues relating to logistics first." Sharing materials and a centralized
system for storing and restocking kits would be essential.
ISC staff began to visit principals in each of the district’s four regions. In the
meantime, several teachers had begun to test the curricula under consideration for
adoption.
By summer, the results of months of hard work were beginning to pay off. Thirty of the
district’s 33 elementary schools agreed to form a science consortium. Kits are stored
and restocked in the district warehouse. To further reduce costs, Baxter and Ruzicka
secured support from local companies. For example, The Eugene Water and Electric Board
agreed to subsidize costs for three kits relating to energy and water.
Principal Penny McDonald points out two ways in which activities in Eugene were a
reversal of the typical process. In many school systems, she explains, "a text is
selected and teachers then make choices based on it. Our teachers, by contrast, knew what
they were looking for and then recommended a curriculum." The way the consortium was
formed was also unique. "A consortium is often a ‘top-down’ thing. In
Eugene we made a group decision to participate," says Donald.
Workshops build teacher confidence
The district had adopted 18 science kits, three each for kindergarten through fifth
grade. Most teachers will teach one life, one earth, and one physical science unit each
year.
To prepare the teachers for this experience, the district has launched a series of
intensive in-service workshops where teachers get training in the "nuts and
bolts" of using STC kits. The first such session, led by ISC teachers, was held last
August. Two hundred seventy-five teachers were eligible for the training, and the
attendance was 100 percent. "Pretty remarkable!" says Ruzicka. Similar sessions
were offered in December and March.
Still in the planning stages are inquiry-specific workshops that will be linked with
Oregon state standards for each grade. They’re needed because the standards require
students at certain grade levels to submit work samples that demonstrate their
competencies in specific science skills.
A world of difference
What’s different about science classes in Eugene since 1997? Students are doing
science, not just reading about science. "The science textbooks are down there on a
shelf--covered with dust," says fifth-grade teacher Darby Randall. The students are
learning more. "They still get the vocabulary and the concepts, but hands-on science
builds it in." says teacher Beverly Lewis. "It makes a world of difference in
kids’ interest in science."
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