Nowadays Sally Elgin would probably be referred to as gifted or talented. But in the 1950s, a really smart girl was obnoxious or a nerd. “I come from a long line of nerds and it’s not always a good social position to be in,” explains Elgin, the Viktor Hamburger Professor of Arts & Sciences at […]
(February 21, 2018 by Molly Davis) On a Saturday afternoon, local elementary school students and their families filed into a classroom for the “Getting Started with Science Fair” workshop, ready to spend the next few hours preparing to apply the scientific method to a question that interested the students. The group listened intently to the opening […]
A life-size cutout of Charles Darwin stands in the corner. Next to him are party hats and a selfie stick. His face adorns a birthday cake that’s wheeled out to much excitement. Numbers are read and fossils are raffled off. Attendees sport buttons that read “I love evolution” and “Team Darwin.” This isn’t your ordinary […]
Located at the southernmost tip of Texas, the Rio Grande Valley is at some points less than a mile from Mexico’s border. While it is home to some of the poorest counties in the country, it’s one of the fastest growing regions in the United States. That growth amounts to more than 340,000 students enrolled […]
Washington University’s Institute for School Partnership continues to grow with the addition of four new members to its team. INSTRUCTIONAL SPECIALIST Victoria Engel credits having great science teachers for igniting her love of science. Specifically, she remembers a sixth-grade teacher who got her involved in a science fair. “I really enjoyed conducting my own research […]
Twelve years after its launch, the innovative mySci curriculum program developed by Washington University’s Institute for School Partnership (ISP) and local teacher leaders is seeing incredible growth, doubling in size two years in a row. This school year, St. Louis Public Schools will introduce mySci in all of its 45 elementary schools. The district joins 150 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]