In the big picture, Jennifer Besowshek is a Twitter newbie. She only joined the social media network in November 2016. But in that short amount of time this second-grade teacher at Prairie View Elementary School in the Wentzville School District has become an active user and one of her favorite subjects is mySci – the […]
The science is clear: girls think boys are better at science. That’s wrong, of course. Still, subtle and not-so-subtle messages from parents, teachers and the media lead girls to doubt their abilities. The result: enormous gender gaps in the fields of science, technology, engineering and math. “By the time they reach middle school, many girls […]
Lactose tolerance is a sign that human evolution is still at work, says Briana Pobiner, a paleoanthropologist with the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History. She was the keynote speaker at Darwin Day, hosted February 11, by Washington University’s Institute for School Partnership. Nearly 50 St. Louis area educators attended the event.Pobiner, an educator […]
Pattonville School District elementary students – at every grade level and of every ability – have made statistically significant gains in science after completing the innovative mySci curriculum developed by the Institute for School Partnership (ISP) at Washington University in St. Louis. The data confirm what ISP Executive Director Victoria May has observed for years in […]
For many K-12 educators, the topic of evolution can be an intimidating one. However, as the foundation of biology, evolution is a crucial subject to address in the science classroom. That’s why the ISP offers educators the resources they need to teach this important topic with confidence. Below is a round-up of some evolution resources curated […]
This past summer nearly 160 educators from 13 school districts and two charter schools kicked off a yearlong professional development program called STEM Teacher Quality Initiative (STEM TQ). Launched in 2011, STEM TQ has graduated some 500 teachers. The regional community effort aims to develop exemplary teachers who can provide quality learning in STEM, so […]
With great care, Paul Markovits unravels a child-sized t-shirt and dangles it before a packed room of teachers. It reads “ECLIPSE ’79,” and was worn by his 4-year-old daughter when Markovits’ young family witnessed the last total solar eclipse visible in the continental United States. That was nearly 40 years ago on February 26, 1979, and […]
When David Kirk was leaving for college, his father had some parting words for him – professors would try and teach him about evolution and he wasn’t to believe a word they said. The advice wasn’t completely unexpected. Kirk’s dad was religiously ultraconservative. Kirk, professor emeritus in the Department of Biology in Arts & Sciences at […]
For Joanna Das, sharing her love of the arts with high school students and encouraging their creativity has always been important. As a graduate student, she went against her professor’s advice and decided to teach a Saturday dance class to high school students at the Museum of the City of New York. Her professor thought […]
“It’s OK to be smart, and it’s actually really cool,” Jeanne Norris says. The curriculum coordinator with the Institute for School Partnership at Washington University is sitting at a table typing away on her laptop adorned with a sticker that says, “Be The Nerd.” “I consider myself a standards wonk,” she says. “Nothing makes me […]