The Scripps Institution of Oceanography on Wednesday announced a new program that will put Scripps grad students in San Diego Unified middle and high school classrooms in an effort to bridge the science education gap.
A five-year, $2.5 million National Science Foundation grant will pay for nine Scripps student fellows to pair up with teachers and provide “hands-on science training in earth, ocean and environmental sciences,” according to a Scripps news release.
The program, called Scripps Classroom Connection, aims to not only improve K-12 science education, which many say is sorely lacking, but also improve the communication skills of the grad students.
“The program offers high and middle school students a level of earth science literacy required as citizens in a world that is becoming increasingly complex,” said Hubert Staudigel, Scripps research geophysicist and Scripps Classroom Connection project co-director, in the release.
Staudigel said that initially the program will focus on the high school level, but that middle school classrooms will eventually be added.
Scripps grad students will spend an average of 10 hours per week in the classrooms, the release said. They will be working at the following schools in 2009: Mission Bay High School; San Diego High School; Mira Mesa High School; San Diego School of Creative and Performing Arts; University City High School; and Kearny High School.
Science education, or a lack thereof, has been a hot topic in our pages recently. My colleague Emily Alpert wrote this story a couple weeks ago about the inquiry method of teaching science, and both Emily and I have been blogging about the topic.