(Courtesy: Joshua Brown)

By Joshua Brown

At the beginning of every school year, my students ask me what I did over summer vacation. This year, I have an answer that will surely mesmerize them: I cleaned caterpillar poop. 

Let me elaborate.  

I was fortunate enough to participate in a weeklong professional development fellowship to the Yanayacu Biological Research Station in Napo Province, Ecuador, to study the effects of climate change on caterpillars. The trip was sponsored and organized by the Earthwatch Institute, an organization whose mission is to engage citizens of all ages in the scientific research process by expanding their awareness of environmental issues. I was part of a team of K-12 educators who assisted climate change researchers as they collected, cataloged and studied the pupation periods of different species of caterpillars in one of the most bio-diverse cloud forests in the world. 

Our findings were pretty grim. On average, the pupation periods of these little furry guys are rapidly accelerating because of temperature increase, meaning they’re turning from caterpillars to moths much faster than before. While this has myriad negative implications for their ecosystem, it also serves as a strong indictment of the destructive effects of global climate change. 

Prior to my Earthwatch Fellowship, I gave little thought to the minute environmental interactions unfolding around me daily. While trekking through the Ecuadorian jungle, I gained a profound appreciation for caterpillars, the negative effects climate change has on their habitat and the power of citizen science programs. (I also learned that caterpillars produce large amounts of poop!)  

Citizen science is one of the most effective ways to increase environmental literacy. The idea is simple: anyone, with the guidance of a professional scientist, can participate in and contribute to the scientific research process in meaningful ways. This symbiotic relationship between researcher and volunteer provides increased data collection and manpower for the scientist, and an unforgettable, empowering experience for the volunteer. In the case of my colleagues and me, the experience also meant innumerable teaching opportunities for our students. 

(Courtesy: Joshua Brown)

I teach in the San Fernando Valley, a Los Angeles suburb punctuated by tract homes and strip malls. For many of my students, meaningful interaction with nature is difficult given nature’s scarcity and lack of accessibility: 6th and 7th graders commute between their homes and school through a sea of concrete and a web of power lines. The result is an often total disconnection between themselves and the natural world, one that is especially treacherous when I try to teach environmental education.

For example, when teaching about water conservation, I quickly discovered that most of my students were entirely ignorant of the water cycle. They were unaware of the water source in our local mountains or the (cemented over) tributary that runs mere feet from our school campus. I realized that my students’ connection to their natural world directly correlate with their level of environmental stewardship. Put another way, they were more likely to care about nature if they understood it better.  In order to cultivate the next generation of conservation-minded citizens, it is imperative to empower and connect students to nature. 

One of the most poignant lessons I learned during my Earthwatch fellowship was that experiential education is powerfully galvanizing. Citizen science-themed field trips to local nature preserves or parks could provide students with the real-world experiences to contextualize their learning. For example, the Earthwatch Institute offers school-based excursions at neighborhood parks to assist researchers studying various environmental issues in urban environments. Citizen science field trips would foster a more ecologically literate citizenry by giving urban students opportunities to interact with nature in meaningful ways. 

Evidence-based, standards-driven environmental education curriculum can be incorporated into a variety of subjects as well. In one of my post-Earthwatch creative writing lessons, I ask my students to describe the physical attributes of caterpillars and moths found in both the Ecuadorian rainforest and in our local community. Supplemented with various photos and videos I took in the field (including some awesome shots of caterpillar feces, which will definitely be a hit with my middle schoolers!), we’ll learn about the life cycle and challenges caterpillars face in their habitat. While my goal is for my students to write with more descriptive language, I also hope they gain an increased appreciation for the complexities and beauty of the natural world around them. 

Future generations face unprecedented environmental challenges, including global warming, peak oil and dwindling fresh water supplies. In the face of such issues, environmental education and citizen science programs can collectively instill an understanding and empathy for the natural world.  It is in all of our best interests that our nation’s urban students develop a profound connection to and appreciation for nature. 

Joshua Brown teaches 6th-, 7th- and 8th-grade self-contained special education at Holmes Middle School in Northridge. He is a Teach Plus Teaching Policy Fellow.

Middle school science teacher Tunji Adebayo was honored by Teach For America at Monday night’s benefit.

Science lessons set to rap music. Aspirations in envelopes pinned to the ceiling. And a commitment to live alongside students.

Tunji Adebayo, who teaches 7th and 8th grade science at Lou Dantzler Preparatory Charter Middle School, was honored Monday night for his innovation and dedication at Teach For America’s “Celebrating Changemakers in Education.”

“Tunji’s dedication to his students is limitless, especially to young black males,” Lida Jennings, executive director of TFA LA, told the 350 guests at the Petersen Automotive Museum gathered for the group’s third annual benefit dinner.

Adebayo, 25, who was born in Nigeria one month before TFA was launched, is in his third year of a profession he hadn’t planned on. A TFA representative reached out to him while he was studying dietetics and nutrition science at the University of Georgia, and he’s never looked back.

“I’m staying in education no matter what,” he told LA School Report before receiving his award Monday night.

After his first year teaching and commuting into South LA from Long Beach, Adebayo moved to the neighborhood, around 51st and Vermont. For him, “It’s essential to live in the community,” he said.

He often sees his students in the area, particularly on weekends when he is at the farmers market, which is near a mall with a movie theater.

“It’s a blessing to live and understand some of their struggles on a daily basis. It makes it more real, to become a part of the community.”

The middle school, one of 12 operated by the Inner City Education Foundation, serves 264 students in grades 6-8, and 74 percent are African Americans, compared to 8.4 percent in LA Unified. The school’s student population identified as socioeconomically disadvantaged stands at 77 percent, the same percentage as LA Unified students who qualify for free and reduced-price meals. And 13 percent have disabilities.

His commitment to helping other African Americans started in college, where he noticed that other “young black males didn’t accomplish what I did because the expectations and support weren’t there.”

His parents, who both have masters degrees, brought him to the United States at age 5 and always stressed education.

“It’s not that Nigeria doesn’t have great schools, but a college degree from the U.S. has respect,” said Adebayo, the youngest of nine who grew up inspired by motivational speakers. “I was expected to achieve greatness, so that’s what I did.” The other young men he saw, “They weren’t pushed.”

Pushing for greatness is part of his mission as he teaches biology, chemistry and physics at the charter school to about 35 kids at a time using a blended learning model. He has his students set goals monthly, holds “Motivational Mondays,” goes over assignment grades as a class and notes when students have gone the extra mile.

“I let them know I appreciate them when they go out of their way” in their work. The key is love, and caring. “Most are deprived at home.”

But when he knows they can do more, he calls them on it. A notation he uses to challenge students is “DCE,” for “didn’t care enough” to get an assignment done on time. “My students can make up everything,” he said. “I want them to have a work ethic. If you work hard enough, be creative enough, you can aspire” to greatness.

Another motivation are the lyrics he sets to popular songs and records for his students. He calls them “lyrical dissections.” The lyrics include science definitions and lesson content. “They ask, what does this mean, and it clicks in their minds” when it’s set to music.

At first he wrote all the lyrics, but now, “I write the hook but make them write the verse.” It’s an alternative assignment; other students might choose drawing or making something. “Do whatever you can to make them engaged.”

• Listen to Tunji Adebayo’s science-driven rap lyrics, including “Who Do You Love” and “Get Your Force Up.”

Some of his students don’t have computers at home, so he makes his classroom and technology available to students before and after school and during lunch.

“But I don’t baby them, because in high school no one cares about your excuse, they care about results.”

Pinned to the ceiling in his classroom are envelopes, Jennings said, containing the students’ goals. “They only need to look up to see their visions and ambitions,” she said.

“Tunji has a lot of tricks up his sleeves,” she added, describing how he once “gave himself a time out, and the class respectfully waited for him to collect himself and get back on track.”

“I never would have been a teacher without Teach For America,” Adebayo said.

What makes him stick with it? “Prayer,” he said. “God told me I have a lot more to learn and give. So here I am because I am still learning and still giving.”

His advice to new teachers: “Be creative. There’s always a way.”

Other “Changemakers” honored at the event included LA Unified school board president Steve Zimmer, who joined TFA in 1992 working as an ESL teacher at Marshall High School in Silver Lake. Jennings said she has met monthly with Zimmer in her three years as executive director. She said they don’t always agree, but “Steve has welcomed me into this community.”

The leadership team of KIPP Raíces Academy, which last year was the only LA Unified school to win a National Blue Ribbon award, received the “School Changemakers” awards: founding principal Amber Young Medina, principal Chelsea Zegarski and assistant principal Yesenia Castro.

Alissa Changala, who teaches at USC Hybrid High, received a “Classroom Changemaker” award alongside Adebayo, and Karen Heilman, TFA LA’s advisory board chair, received the top honor of the night, the “Regional Changemaker” award.

Brendan Finch (courtesy photo)

It was a devastating time for the young teachers who worked at John H. Liechty Middle School near downtown Los Angeles. It was 2009, and 72 percent of the school’s teachers were handed pink slips, casualties of America’s crumbling economy.

Brendan Finch, working there through Teach For America, was among those let go, though he did return for a second year as a permanent substitute in the same classroom. It was the experience of working in a cash-strapped school that led Finch to launch BirdBrain Science, an adaptive online education platform that produces science articles that match students’ independent reading levels. In December, the Los Angeles-based company launched a second platform: BirdBrain History.

“The rationale here is that in any subject area, science for example, concepts and ideas that are being taught are the same across the class. The thing that changes is the student’s ability to comprehend advanced language,” Finch said. “All articles contain the same essential concepts, just at different reading levels.”

During his year-long assignment as a permanent substitute, Finch taught math and science while his partner teacher covered English and history. Two weeks into the school year, however, the partner took maternity leave and never came back. Over the course of the year, Finch said 11 new teachers filled the role, “as these kids became further disillusioned every single month.”

“We’d been watching Bill Nye and acting out the process of photosynthesis, I had alternative assessments out the wazoo, my kids knew their science,” he said. “But they failed their standardized tests because they couldn’t read and they couldn’t explain what they knew in writing.”

So the “teacherpreneur,” who is now 31, recruited “Jedi master” web developer Grenard Madrigal, a friend from their time as students at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and created BirdBrain Science.

Here’s how it works: When students log onto the platform, they take a quiz to diagnose their reading level. When a teacher selects a classroom topic, each student is given the same science article — though the language in the text is adjusted to coincide with each student’s reading ability.

Geared toward mid-elementary and middle school science standards, BirdBrain currently offers seven different reading levels beginning with third grade through high school.

At the end of the article, students take another quiz, which is aligned with the Common Core State Standards to gauge understanding and to adjust the reading level for the next assignment. Teachers can then see a dashboard of data about students’ comprehension of vocabulary words and reading growth.

At first BirdBrain was a side project while Finch worked at several Los Angeles charter schools. He quickly realized he’d have to quit his day job. Following beta testing in 2013, more than 100,000 students and teachers now use BirdBrain Science. So far, the BirdBrain team has written more than 200 science articles.

Backed by a grant from NewSchools Venture Fund, a nonprofit education reform philanthropy, the group has accumulated about 60 articles for its history platform on topics ranging from ancient China to the American Revolution.

“If we can get students that are behind in reading, to read independently in both ELA and also science and social studies, there will be no achievement gap,” he said. “Those students will have such high confidence by the time they reach high school that they won’t be five grade levels behind, and they’ll have been reading successfully for years before that.”

This idea isn’t new — all kinds of companies are dishing up education material based on students’ reading levels. But BirdBrain Science costs teachers $4 per student per year, well below the competition. A similar company, Books that Grow, for example, costs $9 per month.

For the rest of the school year, teachers and students can access BirdBrain History for free.

Although they have assembled a small team, BirdBrain doesn’t have an office. Too much overhead. Finch wants his product to stay affordable, a hat tip to his time working in the classroom.

“Our goal is to create sort of an adoptive curriculum that’s highly financially accessible, that teachers can purchase with their classroom budgets, and districts don’t have to get a grant to pay for,” Finch said. “Now with the proliferation of ed-tech tools, a teacher should be able to choose several of us. Everybody should be able to throw their secret teacher sauce on the different lessons and serve it to their students as the tastiest knowledge that they’ve ever had.”

This article was published in partnership with The74Million.org.

Scott Schmerelson and Jefferson Crain try out a FOSS kit.

LA Unified 2nd graders will be taking a California comprehensive science test when they reach 5th grade in 2019, and district science coordinators are already gearing up for it, according to a presentation before the school boad’s Curriculum, Instruction and Educational Equity Committee.

But it’s a huge undertaking. District officials leading the effort told the committee that preparing students for the state tests, known as the Next Generation Science Standards, will require 90 teachers and administrators to be trained for a Science Leadership Team, and 1,000 teachers (at least one for every school) to serve as a lead science teacher. It will also require creating a new science center in each of the four Local Districts that don’t have one.

“We all know that science is very important in our world today, and we need to see how we are getting the word out to our schools,” said Scott Schmerelson, the board member who is the chairman of the committee.

The State Board of Education adopted the new science standards in 2013 with plans to revamp the district’s science curriculum. Then, statewide tests for 5th, 8th and 11th graders would start in 2019.

Right now, 23 district schools are piloting the new versions of the Full Option Science Systems (FOSS) program that offers hands-on kits for students to solve problems on their own, said Ayham Dahi, the secondary school level science coordinator. FOSS kits are used in every elementary school now for instruction, but the new ones are the Next Generation Science Standards version. The district hopes to expand the pilot FOSS kits to 100 schools within the next year.

To demonstrate the FOSS kits, elementary science coordinator Lillian Valdez-Rodela placed two bags between committee members for a collaborative task. “This is what we are now doing in the 4th grade,” she said. In one bag, the team had to figure out how to make a bulb light up, and in the other, they had to make a flashlight that turns on and off without using wires. Schmerelson and board executive officer Jefferson Crain solved the challenge first.

“We have gone a long way in science,” said Valdez-Rodela. “We are asking students to apply a scientific concept and solve an engineering problem. This is the shift from learning that we did in 1998 to figuring it out today.”

Principal Norma Spencer from Alexander Science Center

Principal Norma Spencer of Alexander Science Center School near Exposition Park, explained how she motivated her staff and students starting in August. “I was the only one who was excited about science and removed the fear and put together a model that worked,” she said.

She said she allowed students and teachers to develop the science curricula and put them in eight-to 12-week segments. That allowed students to redesign projects that didn’t work and gave parents a chance to observe their children’s work.

She now has six Lead Science Teachers, one for each grade, rather than the one-per-school that the district recommends. “I meet with them once a month and they go back and share with their colleagues,” Spencer said. She said she asks that 20 percent of the time be spent teaching, and 80 percent is for child collaboration and lab time. Once a week, she said she visits classes and talks to the children about what they are learning.

“We give children the sense of empowerment and everyone has to participate so no one gets left behind,” Spencer said. “Most importantly, the children are fearless and not afraid to fail or put ideas out there. If it’s not correct then they have their colleagues help them to make it work.”

The last state science standards were adopted in 1998, and that’s when Karen Jin taught at Fairfax High School. Now an LAUSD science coordinator, Jin said engineering is being incorporated at all grade levels, K through 12.

“There is an urgency to get students ready for this transition,” she said,

Now the district has a science center at two ends of the large district in Granada Hills in the western San Fernando Valley and in San Pedro. Jin said there needs to be one in all six Local Districts. Committee member Juan Ramirez, representing UTLA, said he was concerned about some schools’ getting left out and FOSS kits that need to be restocked. The staff said that they are replenishing all the FOSS kits and restocking them.

Committee member Scott Folsom, representing the PTSA, said, “I wish we would move faster on this, but this is a district that doesn’t do fast very well.”

And committee chairman Schmerelson said it would be important to figure out how the a lead science teacher would be chosen. “It will have to be someone who is exemplary in science and well-versed,” he said. “You can’t just have anyone fill that spot.”

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The standards were developed in a collaboration with a number of states over the last 18 months. State Superintendent Tom Torlakson will now design a plan and a timeline for implementing them.

“The adoption of the Next Generation Science Standards in California mark a crucial step in making sure our students are prepared to succeed after they leave our classrooms,” Torlakson said. “Scientific information and technology have changed remarkably since the last time California updated its science standards, and how and what we teach have to change with them.”

NGSS, the science equivalent to the Common Core standards or English and math, emphasizes a deeper understanding of concepts within scientific disciplines, integrating engineering and science practices to help students understand the workings of science and the natural world. They also provide a progression of learning from kindergarten through grade 12 so students learn step by step the knowledge and skills they need for college and careers.

State education officials said the new science standards are critical for students who intend to pursue jobs in the STEM fields of science, technology, engineering and math, a major component of California’s economy. They cited a 2011 U.S. Department of Commerce study, “STEM: Good Jobs Now and For the Future,” that said jobs in the STEM fields grew three times faster than other jobs over the previous 10 years. The report also forecast that STEM jobs are expected to continue to grow at a faster rate than others in the coming decade.

A recent report by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute pointed to one possible flaw in NGSS, that they do not adequately align with the mathematics section of the new Common Core standards.

“Given the critical overlap between science and math, as well as the NGSS authors’ intention to align their science expectations with the common core math standards, these shortcomings signal a need for caution on the part of states that are serious about implementing the [common core] but that are also considering adopting the NGSS,” reads the report, in part.

For more commentary, see this Ed Week blog post.

Previous posts:  LA Unified Getting $113 Million for Common Core Transition*; Public Dislikes Common Core Standards, Says New Gallup Poll; Common Core Training Session Draws Overflow Crowd, Torlakson Hosting Roundtable With Focus on Common Core

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States Soon to Weigh Science-Standards Adoption
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See also the LA Times

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Texas, California Do Compete – in Funding Race to the Bottom
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LAUSD Unveils State-of-the-Art Science Center Named for Astronaut Sally Ride
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New Playa Vista Elementary School Opens After Overcoming Skeptics
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Four L.A. Unified Schools to Offer Free Flu Clinics
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Calif. Poised to Spotlight ELLs Stalled in Schools EdWeek: California is poised to become the first state to unmask the extent to which English-language learners languish in public schools for years without ever reaching fluency.

Teacher Evaluations At Center Of Chicago Strike NPR: In California, after the state legislature mandated the use of student progress benchmarks to rate teachers, an education reform group sued the Los Angeles Unified School District to force the issue.

Segregation Prominent in Schools, Study Finds New York Times: Across the country, 43 percent of Latinos and 38 percent of blacks attend schools where fewer than 10 percent of their classmates are white, according to the report, released on Wednesday by the Civil Rights Project at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Skeptical unions pose challenge to districts’ Race to the Top Ed Source: Nearly 900 districts nationwide, including 76 districts and charter schools in California, have told the federal government that they plan to compete for the final $400 million Race to the Top district competition. But with local unions having in effect a veto over their districts’ application, that number could dwindle.

Governor Signs CTA Bill to Help Laid-off Educators Retrain for Hard-to-Staff Fields CTA Blog: Teachers laid off because of California’s bruising education funding cuts will be able to collect unemployment benefits while retraining to fill other teaching positions in California’s shortage fields because of Gov. Jerry Brown’s signing of a CTA-backed bill.

Brown kills bill establishing study committee on school finance EdSource: Gov. Jerry Brown has vetoed a bill that would have created a task force to explore options for school finance reform, thus ensuring that his own weighted student formula won’t be drowned out in a marketplace of ideas when the Legislature convenes in January.

Most adults don’t think social isolation is bullying: poll KPCC: And only 56 percent of parents believe social exclusion of a student, which may be linked to school violence and teen suicide, merits school intervention.

CSU board OKs tuition increase — good only if Prop. 30 fails LA Times: Trustees vote 11 to 3 for the 5% tuition hike that would raise $58 million in 2012-13. If the Prop. 30 tax-increase measure fails, CSU faces a $250-million loss.