Showing Students That Science Is Everywhere and for Everyone

Brian Carter, Program Officer, Overdeck Family Foundation

Students spend over 80% of their waking hours outside the classroom; so, why do we expect all a student’s learning to be confined to the less than 20% of the time they spend in school? Think back to your own learning experiences as a child. What inspired you to pursue your current career? If you are like 75% of Nobel Prize winners in the sciences, it was likely something you experienced or did outside of school.

We know that not all students get to have high-quality learning experiences outside of school. In fact, there is an estimated 6,000-hour gap by the time students reach 6th grade between out-of-school learning experiences for low-income students and their middle class peers. The lack of these experiences prevents students from finding and exploring their interests.

It’s these authentic, student-directed out-of-school learning experiences that can have a profound effect on sparking and sustaining a student’s interest in pursuing a career in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). A study of students who participated in FIRST Robotics competitions found they were twice as likely to expect to pursue a career in science and technology and more than three times as likely to major in engineering. More than 70% of students who participated in afterschool STEM report positive gains in areas of science interest, science identity, science career interest, and 21st century skills, like critical thinking and perseverance.

For these reasons, Overdeck Family Foundation and the Simons Foundation partnered with DonorsChoose.org to launch the Science Everywhere Innovation Challenge in January 2017. DonorsChoose.org is a site where teachers request the materials and experiences they need for their classrooms and donors give to the projects that inspire them. Through Science Everywhere, the two foundations matched donations to projects that provided hands-on, engaging math and science activities for students to do outside the classroom, with the goal of showing students and teachers that math and science doesn’t stop when the school bell rings.

Since its launch over 900 projects have been funded reaching over 100,000 students. Among the projects supported was Mr. Shafer’s mock crime scene and forensic investigation, which he set up for his students at Skiles Test STEM Elementary School in Indianapolis. At Souderton Charter School Collaborative in Souderton, PA, teacher Jeannine Dunn used this opportunity to launch a Last Chance Repair Club. Thus far, these middle school students have been able to experience the scientific method first hand by working to diagnose and fix what is wrong with broken clocks, calculators, and even a CD player brought in by their fellow classmates.

Overdeck Family Foundation, the Simons Foundation, and DonorsChoose.org are very interested to understand the impact these projects have had on student learning. Thus, each teacher who received funding through Science Everywhere has been invited to participate in an evaluation study being conducted by Prof. Robert Tai at the University of Virginia. It was Prof. Tai’s groundbreaking Sciencepaper in 2006, which found that students who expressed interest in science-related careers by eighth grade were 2-3 times more likely to earn college degrees in STEM disciplines, showing that many students make decisions about their futures before high school and stick to them.In fact, the results showed that even STEM-interested students with weaker standardized math test scores were more likely than their top testing math non-STEM peers to actually get STEM degrees. Prof. Tai has recently developed and validated a new method to assess the impact out-of-school STEM activities have on student engagement in learning.

This evaluation examines types of commonly used learning activities. After an extensive examination of learning activities used in curricula at both national and local levels, Prof. Tai and his colleagues found these seven common types of learning activities: 1) collaborating, 2) competing, 3) discovering, 4) creating/making, 5) performing, 6) caretaking, and 7) teaching.A survey instrument was designed by Prof. Tai and his colleagues to gather data on students' preferences for these seven types of learning activities. The survey is administered twice to the participating students and aims to capture their learning activity preferences before and after program participation. Prof. Tai is using his new methodology to understand the impact the Science Everywhere projects have had on different dimensions of students' learning engagement.

Over the summer, a panel of 12 judges, comprising six national leaders in math and science and six exceptional teachers will select five of the Science Everywhere projects and the teachers who authored these projects will each receive $5,000 prizes. Projects will be evaluated based on emphasis of math and science core concepts, promotion of creativity and hands-on activities outside of school, ease of replication, and demonstration of student learning, as measured by Prof. Tai’s evaluation.

NFL wide receiver Victor Cruz is one of the 12 judges. He founded the Victor Cruz Foundation, which aims to increase the number of underrepresented kids interested in career fields related to STEM while simultaneously promoting positive change in the lives of youth today through innovative educational programs. Victor agreed to be a judge because he believes “math and science learning shouldn’t stop at the classroom door, and these projects will show kids that there’s so much more to explore.” Former NASA astronaut Leland Melvin agreed to judge in order to honor his parents’ legacy, both of whom were educators who inspired him and so many others to reach for the stars. Thus, it was fitting that one of the projects supported through Science Everywhere allowed 1st-grade teacher Josefina Rivera, who teaches at Maria Saucedo Scholastic Academy in Chicago, to obtain sky observation kits, which allowed her students to explore the night sky at with their parents.

While the Science Everywhere Innovation Challenge has ended, DonorsChoose.org has many more hands-on, engaging math and science projects that need your support, over 150 of which involve physics. Go online today and support one that interests you. You can also take inspiration from the more than 900 projects, which were submitted and funded through this challenge, and offer to volunteer at a local school to ensure math and science doesn’t stop just because the school day does.

About Overdeck Family Foundation
Demonstrating a passion and commitment to the future of American education, John and Laura Overdeck established the Overdeck Family Foundation in 2011. The foundation seeks to help all kids achieve their greatest potential by funding compelling, innovative programs and projects that have proven, quantifiable results.

About the Simons Foundation
Established in 1994, the Simons Foundation is a private foundation dedicated to advancing the frontiers of research in mathematics and the basic sciences. An initiative of the Simons Foundation, Science Sandbox supports and collaborates with programs that unlock scientific thinking in everyone, and advance the message that you don’t have to be a scientist to think like one.Science Sandbox is dedicated to inspiring a deeper interest in science among all people, especially those who don’t think of themselves as science enthusiasts.

About DonorsChoose.org
Founded in 2000 by a Bronx history teacher, DonorsChoose.org has raised $500 million for America's classrooms. Teachers come to DonorsChoose.org to request the materials and experiences they need most for their classrooms, and donors give to the projects that inspire them. To date, nearly 2.5 million people and partners have funded projects on the site, reaching 21.6 million students and making DonorsChoose.org the leading platform for supporting U.S. public schools.

brian.trevor.carter@gmail.com

These contributions have not been peer-refereed. They represent solely the view(s) of the author(s) and not necessarily the view of APS.