Physicists, engineers, and other scientists are being urged to become involved with science schoolteachers in their classrooms. (See, for example, Ramon E. Lopez and Ted Schultz, Physics Today, Physics Today 0031-9228 54 9 2001 44 https://doi.org/10.1063/1.1420511 September 2001, page 44 , and the Letters department, Physics Today 0031-9228 55 1 2002 10 https://doi.org/10.1063/1.2408437 January 2002, page 10 .) Easier said than done.
This letter presents nine relevant lessons extrapolated from retiree volunteer experience in many middle-school science classrooms. We report on a total equivalent of approximately 11 years, at one day a week: 6 years by ourselves (a physicist and an engineer), and the remainder by 12 other academic or professional scientists who participated to varying extents.
We discuss only classroom involvement in which a scientist is working directly with one teacher, one half-day to two full days per week—with the primary goals being to aid and improve mainstream teaching, and perhaps to develop and implement a new curriculum.
Lesson 1: You are much more likely to be useful and successful if your teacher is eager to accept help, to be guided, and to recognize your expertise.
In middle school, science is now regularly taught as a combination of physical, Earth, and life sciences, yet most teachers have been trained only in life sciences. Such teachers may well feel less competent in the physical sciences, and eagerly accept you. Unfortunately we have also found that some poorly qualified teachers do not want any “meddling” or outside observation in their classroom.
However, a skilled or “master” teacher may not want you to aid in mainstream teaching, but rather see you only as providing “gee-whiz” extras, demos, or enrichments; doing supplemental work with a few advanced students; or tutoring less successful students. Though useful, those activities have less impact. That teacher may not accept you as a full consultant or participant in the day-to-day planning and teaching, and (perhaps subconsciously) may even view your comments and suggestions as critical instead of supportive.
Lesson 2: It is very important that your teacher view and appreciate you as an equal-but-different collaborator and partner in the team.
Lesson 3: Do remember that your teacher is the boss. You must have humility. School teaching is very different from an academic or professional environment. You must have a desire to enhance the students’ learning experience in ways that meet the teacher’s needs and that also fulfill your own aims to aid and improve science learning overall.
Lesson 4: Move slowly and with care. Start with simply observing class and teacher; move on to small, incidental collaborative steps; then finally become a true junior participant in the whole process.
Lesson 5: Choose your teacher carefully—and quickly move to another if the arrangement does not appear to be mutually satisfying.
Lesson 6: You may have more success in a lower socioeconomic neighborhood, with typically less-well-prepared teachers (senior teachers often can choose their schools). And there you may do more societal good. Still, classroom attention and disciplinary problems may be worse. Though those will be the teacher’s sole responsibility, they will impact upon you. It is your choice—the challenge may be greater—yet so may be the personal reward.
In two low-socioeconomic placements—one with an experienced life sciences teacher who admitted to knowing no physical sciences, and another with a first-year teacher—we did very well. But, in two placements in an excellent school and affluent neighborhood, we were treated like wallpaper.
Lesson 7: Remember that, for the teacher, outside help can also add to the workload, take up valuable time, and require extra coordination and communication. You may need to work to keep yourself in the loop.
Lesson 8: You generally need a “sponsor” for authentication before linking up with an individual teacher within a school system. Simply walking into the school does not work.
Our initial group of volunteers were invited by the science coordinator of our county school system. We were under the auspices of RESEED (the national Retirees Enhancing Science Education through Experiment and Demonstration). 1 RE-SEED and the school system jointly provided a 35-hour training course, which wisely included many classroom issues.
At the same time, the school system was implementing a major science curriculum revision. Our sponsor, the science coordinator, had explicitly pressured the master science teachers in those schools, already in curricula throes, to accept our volunteer aid—accept willy-nilly. That perhaps explains the poor response of several teachers, who let us observe but really do nothing more. They did not want an even further perturbation in their now-rocking, yet previously well-oiled, ships, particularly if they were close to retirement.
Lesson 9: In the greater Boston area, RE-SEED and SEED, working jointly, have been very successful over the past 10 years. SEED directly interacts with local school systems and trains willing teachers in weekend and summer workshops. Then RE-SEED places its trained retiree volunteers with the SEED teachers. This double-barreled approach is clearly superior, but it is a much larger endeavor.
Do heed these lessons. We wish you a very successful experience. Good luck.
