Stacy Morrow, who teaches fourth grade at Fair Oaks Elementary School in Redwood City did not need to tell me about her students’ enthusiasm for science. It was obvious. Working in teams with a FOSS kit on magnetism and electricity, they could barely contain their excitement at powering a light bulb with a simple electrical circuit.

Like a quarter of California school children, most of Morrow’s students are native Spanish speakers. From time to time I’d hear the odd Spanish phrase – along with new English ones, like “serial circuits” and “D-cell batteries” — drift across the room. Morrow believes that as ESL students, her kids are asked to work much harder than other fourth-graders, mastering a second language along with all the other academic demands of elementary school. It must be a relief, I thought, to engage in a subject where teamwork and experimentation are more important than getting all the words right.

Fair Oaks is a “program improvement school,” which means it’s been identified by federal No Child Left Behind program as falling below target in certain subjects. (Here’s an SF Chronicle article about the “stigma” of Program Improvement status). Morrow says test scores at Fair Oaks are on the rise, but, as this recent New York Times article describes, those standards can be tough to meet even for some of the most improved schools.

Given those demands, it’s impressive that Morrow and other teachers at Fair Oaks find as much time for science lessons as they do – (it’s also rare, as this study showed). Morrow credits this to the FOSS kits and a supportive administration. But she deserves a lot of the credit, for taking the time to educate herself. The Lawrence Berkeley study also showed that many elementary teachers simply don’t feel qualified to teach science. That problem is compounded in economic boom times, when high-paying tech jobs make the pool of science-qualified teachers even smaller. It’s fortunate that some of the same industries that compete for workers are also helping train more K12 teachers. Our QUEST education team has put together a page of science education resources, which we invite you to check out.

Finally, a disclaimer: We’re barely scratching the surface here. I hope everyone watches QUEST’s excellent TV story on science literacy, which goes into far more detail than our six-minute radio slot allowed.

Listen to the Closing the Science Gap radio report online.

The author feeling cheekyLast Monday I finally took my show out on the road. At The Tech Museum I run hands on genetics programs for visitors. On Monday, we took them to Overfelt High School in San Jose.

And the students had a blast*. They got to take home 4X6 glossy pictures of their cheek cells like the one I posted here (that’s my handsome cell). They got to use DNA from a crime scene to solve a murder. They got to make bacteria glow like a jellyfish. They got to spool their own DNA. And they got to learn what 1000-2000 bases of their DNA looks like.

For the most part they were genuinely excited and engaged in the activities. They learned about nuclei, dominant and recessive gene versions, why blood cells look different from nerve cells and lots more.

Some educators call this sort of thing “drive-by science.” A scientist zooms in, wows the kids and then disappears. These educators feel that this sort of thing has little effect on learning science. I beg to differ.

This experience obviously can’t replace classroom learning. But it can reinforce what they’ve already learned. And it can show them how exciting science really is (even if their textbooks have convinced them otherwise).

Nice theory, but is there any proof this sort of thing works? You betcha.

A new study out by the National Academies shows that this kind of “informal learning” greatly increases the retention time of the things people learn while in that environment. For example, these kids, having seen and taken a picture home with them of their own nuclei, will remember that a nucleus houses DNA longer than if they learn it in a textbook or lecture.

If the study is right, the students will also become more excited about science so they’ll pursue it in the future. Especially if the teacher then does follow on activities to reinforce what they learned (which he will).

Hopefully the nine graduate students from Stanford’s Department of Genetics and I did our part to get some kids wanting to learn more about science. Maybe we even got a few to imagine themselves as scientists. Not bad for a day’s work.

* Quote from the students’ teacher:

These are some of the adjectives my students used to describe their experience: “awesome”, “cool”, “fun”; and they don’t use these very lightly when it comes to academic activities. Some of them were wondering if we are “going to do that again.” They enjoyed not only the activities, but also the experience of interacting with young graduate students from Stanford. Some experiences that can be a matter of fact for us can be huge for some of these kids and have a dramatic impact on their lives.