Changing the Face of Science, One Neighborhood at a Time

I've blogged here before about the idea of community science workshops where neighborhood kids and families could go mess around, build rockets, and so forth. Earlier today my friend Gabrielle Lyon took the idea a few steps farther in an op-ed piece on the Huffington Post. Gabe is the co-founder of Project Exploration, which expands access to science by
connecting minority youth and girls with scientists and creating opportunities for youth to explore scientific problems alongside them. Project Exploration is one of Elev8 Chicago's extended-day providers. Their Sisters4Science program is going great guns with middle school girls at Reavis Elementary and Perspectives Calumet Middle School. For a taste of what they are all about, read the article here.

Going to Scale: Family Science Nights

When a school system has 600 schools and 400,000 students, you don't have time to make changes one kid at a time. You need programs that scale, whether that's the recent Spring Into Sports that attracted 800 kids a day to four schools during Spring Break, or the Family Science Nights that result from trainings by the Museum of Science of Industry.

My wife Pam came home from Stockton School in Uptown tonight with a bunch of nice photos of that school's annual Family Science Night. More than 150 students, parents and teachers (and the principal with her own two kids) turned out to participate in scientific inquiries including Ultraviolet Beads; Sink, Hover and Float; Sound Sandwich; Bee Hummer (a spinning rope that makes noise); Slime; Garden in a Glove; Making Paper; Marbles at Work; and Ink Chromotography.

All the activities originated in the museum's education department, which trains nearly 1,000 teachers a year on ways to engage students in hands-on science activities, which are also available online.

So do the math. A thousand teachers, perhaps 30 kids each, that's 30,000 students. Scale.