Education Week - May 2, 2018 - 12

At Museums, Teachers Learn How
To Take Science Class Into the City
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1

school-museum partnerships in Boston, Denver, and Miami as well.
"These programs have a profound influence
on student interest in and attitude toward
science, in addition to providing assistance
to teachers and creating datasets for use in
informal science institutions," said Jennifer
Elliott, a researcher and educator with the
Intrepid Sea, Air, and Space Museum in New
York, which is not part of Urban Advantage,
in a study on the trend of museum-school
partnerships.
Elliott found that as schools focused more on
accountability testing in the last decade, museums saw significantly less interest in field
trips-Boston's New England Aquarium lost
25 percent of its in-school visitors from 2005
to 2008, for example-and more cultural and
science institutions have refocused school engagement on integrating teacher training and
out-of-school learning to complement school
curriculum and standards.
In New York, Urban Advantage gives every
teacher enough vouchers for every student in
his or her class, plus those students' families,
to return to the museums on their own-a big
incentive, teachers say, for students whose
families rarely visit or have even heard of the
participating science institutions.
"We're very place-based," said Jay Holmes,
a senior coordinator for professional development at Urban Advantage. "One of our founding principles is taking advantage of the cultural resources here."
Newly released research results from an ongoing study suggest the approach shows some
promise at boosting student-test scores and
retaining early-career teachers.
The program includes intensive, long-term
professional development for teachers on-site
at the partner institutions and out in the New
York area. Teachers commit to 40 hours of
mostly weekend training in the first year, just
over 22 hours in each of the second two years,
and 12 hours in the fourth year, with Urban
Advantage providing stipends for weekend
training and reimbursement for substitute
teachers during the week.
Each cohort of teachers meets for five
themed workshops at different museums
throughout the year. Staff from the science
centers and gardens also train science teachers to integrate more of the nuts and bolts of
science work-collecting data from the field
and secondary sources, laying out hypotheses,
and planning and carrying out experiments in
an ongoing project with other students.

"Teachers can't get everything they need
from paper," he said, then grinned. "Doing it
ourselves means I now know how mushy the
ground is right on the bank."
Each teacher also receives $500 to pay for
science materials for his or her classrooms.
"We didn't just do a [professional development] where we see something amazing that
we can't do with our kids because we don't
have the resources," said Rachelle Travis, a
science teacher for grades 6-8 at PS 288 in the
Coney Island section of the city, who has participated in the program for four years.
For example, Ian Weissman, an 8th grade
science teacher at MS 250 in Manhattan, used
the money to pay for new microscopes for the
lab. He then used project plans developed
during last year's training to teach his students how to collect and analyze levels of
dissolved oxygen at various points along the
Hudson River, to gauge pollution in the waterway.
Partners are the New York City education
department and eight major science institutions across the city's five boroughs: the
American Museum of Natural History, the
Brooklyn Botanic Garden, the New York Botanical Garden, the New York Hall of Science,
the Queens Botanical Garden, the Staten Island Zoo, the Bronx Zoo, and the New York
Aquarium.

Keeping Teachers, Boosting Students
Meryle Weinstein, a research assistant professor for education policy at New York University's Steinhardt School for Culture, Education and Human Development, has studied
and evaluated the program as it grew from a
handful of pilot teachers in 2005 to some 870
teachers and 92,500 students in nearly half
the city's middle schools in 2017.
In evaluations presented at the American
Educational Research Association meeting
here last month, Weinstein and her colleagues

found that the students of teachers who
had taken part in the program scored significantly higher on the state's 8th grade science
test, and they were 4 percentage points more
likely to score "proficient" on the exam than
students whose teachers had not been in the
training.
A separate 2017 study of the program
also found that teachers who participated
in the training were 3 percent more likely
to stay at their school the following year-
which translates into about 45 teachers districtwide.
Early-career teachers with three to five
years of experience benefited from the program more; those who participated were
16 percent more likely to remain in teaching
than their colleagues who did not take part in
the Urban Advantage program.
Josh Winterfield, an 8th grade science
teacher at Wagner Middle School, said most of
the professional development he was sent to as
a young teacher was "completely useless; too
simple, mostly basic content-we had several
days of [professional development] just on how
to set up the state test."
He joined Urban Advantage nearly nine
years ago, and "it was the first PD that expanded on what I was doing and made me a
better teacher." Winterfield has continued to
come back for classes ever since, even becoming a trainer himself.
This year, Urban Advantage also launched a
pilot program with 46 teachers in grades 3-5
at 21 elementary schools in the city.
The positive results echo those for similar
school-museum professional development
partnerships around the country. A 2014
study of a museum-based professional-development program at the Museum of Science
and Industry in Chicago, for example, found
that the program led to gains in both teacher
content knowledge and student achievement.

"

We're very placebased. One of our
founding principles
is taking advantage
of the cultural
resources here."
JAY HOLMES
Senior Coordinator for Professional
Development, Urban Advantage

Coverage of after-school learning opportunities is
supported in part by a grant from the Charles Stewart
Mott Foundation at www.mott.org. Education Week
retains sole editorial control over the content of this
coverage.
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"We try to apply the Next-Generation Science Standards to understand a phenomenon," said Gloria Toombs, a 7th grade science
teacher from Bronx PS/MS 95, who is part of
this year's cohort of teachers. For every task,
she said, teams of teachers work through the
project "so we can work out all the bugs."
During a session in the fall, teachers
learned to structure lessons around original data collection throughout the city. Field
scientists taught the teachers how to collect
packets of wet leaves and debris to study ecosystems at the water's edge.
Raphael Tomkin, a 7th and 8th grade science teacher at PS 233 in Manhattan, admits
he wobbled a bit as he walked along the watersoaked banks of the Hudson River.
"Getting a paper [lesson plan], even if you
read it thoroughly-and I do-it's very different from if you get to do it yourself," he said.

Sarah D. Sparks/Education Week

Hands-On Experience

Middle school teachers (from left) Clarissa Martinez, Raphael Tomkin, and Ian Weissman take field notes on an exhibit during a
training program at the American Museum of Natural History in New York.

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Education Week - May 2, 2018

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