This week in education news, NSTA and STEM Education Coalition sent a letter to the Education Department saying it is misinterpreting ESSA; Florida House Bill 989 was signed into law by Governor Rick Scott; the White House denies reports that OSTP is now completely unstaffed; a reminder of what’s wrong with how kids learn science (and other subjects); states are learning on their waivers from past law for their new education plans; and states can indeed use science tests to rate schools under ESSA.

Science Teachers: DeVos’s Education Department Is Misinterpreting Federal Law

Science educators aren’t exactly thrilled with the Education Department under Betsy DeVos. They weren’t fans when President Trump recently pulled the United States out of the landmark Paris climate agreement (which all countries had signed except Syria and Nicaragua) — and DeVos issued a statement in support. Now, the National Science Teachers Association and the STEM Education Coalition have sent a letter to the Education Department saying it is misinterpreting the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), the federal K-12 education law that replaced No Child Left Behind, in regard to science and school accountability plans. Click here to read the article featured in The Washington Post.

Two Sad Ironies In Florida Passing Its ‘Anti-Science’ Law

It is officially called Florida House Bill 989, and it was signed into law by Florida Governor Rick Scott on June 26th, 2017 after passing both chambers of the house. According to the National Center for Science Education’s website: With the law now in place, any county resident — not just any parent with a child in the country’s public schools, as was the case previously — can now file a complaint about instructional materials in the county’s public schools, and the school will now have to appoint a hearing officer to hear the complaint. Click here to read the article featured in Forbes.

White House Denies Report That Part of Its Science And Technology Office Is Empty

The White House is denying reports that the one division within the Office of Science and Technology Policy is now completely unstaffed. CBS News reported no staff members were left at the office’s science division ― one of four such branches that comprise the OSTP ― after three employees from President Barack Obama’s administration worked their final day on Friday. When asked about the alleged vacancies, White House deputy press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told HuffPost on Saturday the report was false. Click here to read the article featured in the Huffington Post.

The Necessity Of Interactive Tech In The Classroom

There’s no question that technology for the classroom has boomed in the past decade, from the preschool to college level. In fact, in 2016 alone, Chromebooks accounted for nearly half of the devices sold for classrooms in America. As a society, we’re creating an education system that better accounts for the real world applications of technology. Unlike generations before them, Generation Z is gaining an entirely new set of skills in school that will prepare them for the future. From the age of three years old, children are being introduce to technology in schools, and likely even earlier at home. Click here to read the article featured in the Huffington Post.

This Story Reveals What’s Wrong With How Kids Learn Science (And Other Subjects)

You’re a science teacher so of course you teach about heat. There’s a whole section in your textbook titled “Heat.” Does the concept excite your students? Could heat have a story? Yes, there almost always is an underlying story that accompanies any achievement. Those stories not only help explain ideas, they cement them into your head. Traditionally stories have been a tool great teachers cherish. But in the 20^th Century we mostly gave up storytelling for an assortment of teaching methodologies (most developed by commercial entities). Click here to read the article featured in The Washington Post.

America’s Decline in Education: Is Anyone Worrying About It?

The story of education dates to ancient civilization—but the story of modern public education begins in the U.S. For over 100 years, the American university system has been the envy of the world. Talented engineers, renowned scientists, and students from all over the world come to the U.S. for higher education, especially in STEM education fields, to get the best possible education so they can land great jobs and support their families. In fact, international students often outnumber Americans, now accounting for 70% of the graduate students in electrical engineering, 63% in computer science, and 60% in industrial engineering. Click here to read the article featured in the Huffington Post.

Are States Leaning On Waivers From Past Law For Their New Education Plans?

The Every Student Succeeds Act hasn’t been the only time in the last few years that events in Washington led states to rethink their accountability and other education policies. Yes, we’re talking about those waivers from the No Child Left Behind Act that the Obama administration gave out to most states. So while we were out here for the Education Commission of the States conference, we thought we would ask a few state chiefs (and a former chief who stepped down last month) whether they were drawing heavily on those waivers from the previously federal K-12 law for their Every Student Succeeds Act plans. The short answer seems to be: They are leaning a fair amount on their waiver plans and other work that was going on when waivers were handed out. However, the chiefs were also quick to point out that they are rethinking at least a few high-profile policies, like school improvement, thanks to ESSA’s flexibility for states. Click here to read the article featured in Education Week.

Can States Use Science Tests to Rate Schools Under ESSA?

There’s been a ton of confusion lately about whether and how states can incorporate science, social studies, and other subjects into their systems for rating schools under the Every Student Succeeds Act. The upshot is that, yes, states can indeed use science, social studies, the arts, and other subjects beyond reading and math for accountability. But there are some caveats when it comes to just how they do that. Click here to read the article featured in Education Week.

STEM Degrees Are Good For Careers. But Do They Lead To More Innovation?

There is much buzz among educators and policy makers about the value of a STEM degree. Graduating with a degree in science, technology, engineering, or math (STEM) is indeed good for the individual, with studies showing better job prospects and higher pay. But what is the impact on the overall economy? Click here to read the article featured in the Kellogg Insight.

Stay tuned for next week’s top education news stories.

The Communication, Legislative & Public Affairs (CLPA) team strives to keep NSTA members, teachers, science education leaders, and the general public informed about NSTA programs, products, and services and key science education issues and legislation. In the association’s role as the national voice for science education, its CLPA team actively promotes NSTA’s positions on science education issues and communicates key NSTA messages to essential audiences.

The mission of NSTA is to promote excellence and innovation in science teaching and learning for all.

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I’m looking for ideas to integrate physical science and social studies at the middle school level. — E., New Jersey

Inventions and inventors could be an interesting context to explore the connections between science, engineering, technology, history, and economics.

A social studies colleague framed a unit around two questions: Why do we invent or innovate? How do some inventions and innovations change society? The unit started with a discussion and demonstrations of 19^th century communications technologies (telegraph and telephone), and students compared them with today’s cell phones and texting (which the students readily identified with). The students then investigated how the technology of the Industrial Revolution sparked changes that transformed the United States from an agricultural to an industrial economy, from a rural to an urban society.

To connect with physical science, topics such as mechanical forces and simple machines, motion, electricity and magnetism, and light and sound waves could be investigated in the context of inventions and technology and their impact on society. Students could engage in building projects, tinkering with things to see how they work, designing solutions to problems, and working with robotics, computers, and other electronics. Increasingly common “makerspaces” in schools and libraries provide students with the resources to collaborate, design, and create solutions.

As a culminating project, students could become inventors themselves—identifying a problem, designing and testing an invention to solve it, and marketing their invention to others, explaining the possible impact on the users. NSTA journals have articles showing young classroom inventors and “invention conventions.” (This Resource Collection has some of these articles and other online resources).

In the context of science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics STEM/STEAM education and the engineering focus of the NGSSNext Generation Science Standards, students should understand and have experiences with the processes of inventing and innovating, addressing the question “How do we invent inventors?”

Photo: http://tinyurl.com/jy83oqq

Problem-based learning (PBL) offers an excellent way to capture students’ imaginations, stimulate their curiosity, and engage them in deep learning. The new NSTA Press book Problem-Based Learning in the Earth and Space Science Classroom K-12 by Tim J. McConnell, Joyce Parker, and Janet Eberhardt provides step-by-step instruction and tools to help teachers implement PBL in the classroom. Both informative and practical, the book breaks down PBL strategies into bite-sized chunks.

“One of the strengths of the PBL framework is that learners are active drivers of the learning process and can develop a deeper understanding of the concepts related to the problem starting from many different levels of prior understanding. PBL is an effective strategy for both novices and advanced learners. PBL is also flexible enough to be useful in nearly any science context,” the authors state.

The key to effective implementation is teacher planning, the authors explain. That’s where this book can help. PBL is a teaching strategy that presents learners with authentic scenarios that represent “problems” to be worked out using concepts, background knowledge, research, and investigations.

The book offers classroom-tested PBL problems that were developed as part of a National Science Foundation-funded program. Problem-Based Learning Project for Teachers brought teachers together to use the PBL framework with eight content strands.  As a result, the problems presented in the book have been tested and refined.

In addition to offering background information on the fundamentals of PBL, teaching strategies, and relevant research, the book provides chapters on Earth’s Landforms and Water, Rock Cycle and Plate Tectonics, Weather, and Astronomy, and breaks down lessons into bands of K-2, 3-5, 6-8, and 9-12.

For example, the Earth’s Landforms and Water chapter asks students to analyze and interpret data and construct explanations based on evidence of how geoscience processes have changed the Earth’s surface at varying times throughout its history. To put it into practice, students are asked to help a comic book publisher create scenery and story lines that include real geologic formations.

The chapter walks through the assignment, outlining each step to provide guidance and support. In a related comic book exercise featuring a Dolphin heroine, students must imagine a real underwater location and include ocean landforms that Dolphino might encounter.

For this exercise, first students would use topographic maps to find patterns in oceanic landforms as the teacher offers instruction about how to read these image patterns on the map and make sense of what they mean in real life. Next, students are asked to draw what the features would look like if seen from a submarine or underwater camera. What does a continental shelf look like in real life? What about an underwater volcano? This exercise helps students translate what they see on the map to a three-dimensional world, and when they use their imagination for the creative writing exercise they deepen their understanding. From academic to creative, the assignments allow students to use a range of skills and knowledge. 

Check out the free sample chapter  that explains how to facilitate Problem-Based Learning in the classroom. 

Are you ready to implement PBL in your science classroom? You can buy the book in the NSTA Store here.

Also available from these authors is the companion book Problem-Based Learning in the Life Science Classroom, K–12.

At P.S. 333 Manhattan School for Children in New York City, science teacher Shakira Provasoli encourages students to place recyclable materials in the recycle bin.

Taking actions to become a zero-waste school can be “a big pain,” says Brian Shmaefsky, professor of biology and environmental science at Lone Star College in Kingwood, Texas. But he adds, “As an environmental scientist, I typically look at waste reduction because of budget concerns…Now [that] we can provide digital [assignments and tests] at school, it has really made a big difference in reducing paper costs. [We’ve seen a] 95% drop in costs.”

While “budget cuts drive zero-waste efforts,” he allows, “a cost-cutting mentality [must eventually be] replaced by a sustainability mentality.”

In labs, says Shmaefsky, zero waste “gets tricky. Traditional labs use a lot of reagents, animal specimens, and disposables.” He advises, “First try to do as much virtually as possible; students get the same effect without chemical and animal waste. With virtual labs, [students] can make an error and not have to start over. [After the virtual lab,] then do an actual lab, and [you’ll] have less mistakes made by students.”

In his school’s chemistry courses, teachers “took a reduction approach [by using] smaller amounts of reagents per class. Or [they substituted] labs [for ones in which] some chemicals are reusable, versus [having] waste disposal. In simple procedures, [you can] reuse reagents,” he relates.

Biology teachers found “a vendor that [sold] simple home kits with reusable, safe materials. Students could buy the kits instead of paying a lab fee,” Shmaefsky contends. “When students are finished with the kits, as the group project, students could clean them up and donate them to schools that didn’t have the materials. [Schools receiving donations] were particularly elementary schools; we gave them instructions to recycle or reuse the kits. Anything that had to be disposed of was environmentally friendly and in small amounts….

“A civic engagement project made our environmental science class very green. We became a recipient of trash; students collected trash and built their own environmental equipment. [For example, instead of throwing soda bottles in the trash,] they made Berlese funnels out of [the] bottles,” Shmaefsky recalls.

At P.S. 333 Manhattan School for Children in New York City, K–5 science teacher Shakira Provasoli serves as sustainability coordinator and has spearheaded zero-waste efforts. Last year, when a kindergarten class discovered their classroom couldn’t achieve zero waste because of the cafeteria food’s packaging, she had the kindergarteners write letters explaining the problem, and sent them to the city’s Department of Education’s Office of Sustainability. When the city’s departments of sanitation and education chose 100 schools to launch a zero-waste pilot program, her school was among them.

“It was the first year my school had a lot of resources and people devoted to zero waste,” says Provasoli. “It was a lot easier to do because I was not the only one to promote sustainability.”

A group of parents found a source of compostable trays to replace plastic foam trays, for example. “A waste disposal service agreed to pick up the composted trays for free if the school weighed [the amount of compost] for a month…We went from 12 bags of garbage collected seven years ago to not even one full bag on the first day,” she reports. “We’re hoping to do this with utensils; we haven’t eliminated plastic utensils yet.”

Provasoli works with TerraCycle (https://goo.gl/2xJxCt), a program offering free national recycling solutions. “They send us a link for shipping labels for sending [food packaging waste] to them. We accumulate points that can be redeemed for money,” she explains.

“My school has just adopted a zero-waste cafeteria [policy], and also enhanced classroom recycling,” says Lisa Wininger, a science teacher at Plainwell Middle School in Plainwell, Michigan. “In the cafeteria, we took all the trashcans away, and took the dumpsters away; we use recycle bins instead,” she explains. Because her school is in an agricultural community, “we recycle food waste for local pig farming. The students wanted to give food to the pigs. We really cut down on the amount of waste that has to go to a landfill: Food waste is down 90%; non-food waste is down by approximately 75%.”

Wininger says her students are proud of their efforts to recycle and reuse. “It gives them a new sense of pride in themselves and their abilities, knowing they can make a difference in their community to effect change.”

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Climate Stewards Education Project (CSEP; see https://goo.gl/Arl7fs), “provided the impetus [for my school] to create a zero-waste plan,” she relates. CSEP provides educators of elementary through university students with professional development, collaborative tools, and support for their zero-waste programs and connects teachers with a mentor.

“My mentor in Washington, D.C., Dale Glass, gives good ideas on [reducing our] carbon footprint,” Wininger observes. CSEP presents free webinars, and “we can network online and give one another suggestions,” she notes.

 “We have a recycling club at our school, so both the students and I are trying to be zero waste,” says Cindy Hopkins, seventh- and eighth-grade science teacher at Kaffie Middle School in Corpus Christi, Texas. “All of our projects must be done with recycled goods…[I tell students that our] bins should be full every day.”

Teachers “have to plan for zero waste, have forethought. You have to explain it to students ahead of time. It’s a constant thought about what goes into the recycling bin. The teacher has to be careful of what he or she throws out,” Hopkins contends.
The benefit for students is “if we can do it here, you can do it in your home. It becomes a habit they can do at home,” she asserts.
She adds that Communities In Schools of the Coastal Bend, a local nonprofit dropout prevention agency, “holds a recycling contest, and I require all students to participate. They learn so much when they do…This year, we’re creating a poster, and one poster from the city will [be chosen to appear] on city dump trucks.”

Rebecca Newburn, science and math teacher at Hall Middle School in Larkspur, California, has created a Zero Waste Challenge in which students analyze where they create waste in their lives, then devise a plan and implement it to reduce their waste. Her website for the challenge (https://goo.gl/22ZzBs) has suggestions and resources for becoming a zero-waste school or home.

Newburn also was a pilot teacher of KQED Learning’s Engineering for Good, a three-week, project-based learning unit for middle school science classrooms that focuses on developing solutions to the negative environmental impact of plastics. In the unit, which supports Next Generation Science Standards, students use the engineering design process to define a problem, brainstorm solutions, develop prototypes, and iterate on their designs. As a final project, students produce videos about their solutions. Access the unit at https://goo.gl/46CcMt.

This article originally appeared in the Summer 2017 issue of NSTA Reports, the member newspaper of the National Science Teachers Association. Each month, NSTA members receive NSTA Reports, featuring news on science education, the association, and more. Not a member? Learn how NSTA can help you become the best science teacher you can be.

The mission of NSTA is to promote excellence and innovation in science teaching and learning for all.

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