1st
appeared 19 July 1999
$475,000 Grant Links UCSF Scientists with
Teachers to Boost Science Learning
A corps of San Francisco public school teachers will
perform laboratory experiments at UCSF and work with their fellow teachers and university
scientists to strengthen their science teaching skills.
The new program is funded by a $475,000 grant from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
The new "Bridges" initiative, developed by
UCSF's Science and Health Education Partnership (SEP), will help 125 San Francisco
elementary and middle school teachers develop new science teaching skills by
re-introducing them to lab research and then helping them collaborate on more successful
school science lesson plans.
The Bridges program is the newest of many partnerships
between UCSF's SEP program and the San Francisco Unified School District. All draw on
UCSF's scientists to help boost public school math and science teaching in the city. SEP
now works with all the city's middle schools and nearly three-fourths of the elementary
schools.
"I expect Bridges will help teachers become more confident in their ability to teach
science as they gain deeper knowledge of the material and also gain greater access to
resources, including their contact with experts in the science fields," said Liesl
Chatman, director of UCSF's SEP program.
The lab component is part of the program's effort to improve teachers' feel for and
understanding of the process of science, and not just its content.
The initiative bridges university scientists and public school teachers, and also links
teachers of different grade levels.
Teachers will work together to apply their lab
experience to public school science curricula and to coordinate lesson plans in, say,
human anatomy, for different grade levels.
"This offers a great chance for teachers to share knowledge across grade levels,
particularly across elementary to middle school," says SEP's Chatman. "That will
make for more continuity in teaching science, and help students advance their knowledge as
they revisit science fields in later grades."
After the one-month "summer institutes" where the teachers work in the lab in
the morning and work on lesson plans in the afternoon, the Bridges program supports
year-long efforts to implement the plans. "Case study teams" -- often including
UCSF scientists -- give teachers a setting where they can tackle particular problems
they've encountered in assessing how well students are learning science in the classroom.
The grant to UCSF is one of 35 announced by HHMI, totaling $12.7 million, to enrich
science education in local schools and help attract a broad range of students to
biomedical careers.
The UCSF grant is matched by funds from the UC Office
of the President University-School Partnerships program, and by other SEP funding sources.
Links:
UCSF SEP
Howard Hughes Medical Institute
HHMI 1999 Precollege Science Education Grants
Source: Wallace Ravven, News
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