New Emphasis on Science in the City
The Northern Light, Jan/Feb 2008

By Karen Kogler

There’s a lot going on at the Chicago Lutheran school. In one room, students mix a concoction to create silly putty. In another, more students peer intently while counting the water drops from an eye-dropper that fit on a penny. Over here, some students combine various common household products to see which mixture creates a gas that will extinguish a candle flame. Some mixtures, they discover, make the flame larger. Still other students dissect a heart.

But there are no children or youth present. All the students are teachers, and they’re having a great time as they learn. They are meeting one evening a month throughout this school year to get new science materials and be trained in their use. During the day, they are already doing these and other science experiments with their own elementary school students.

"I was never really excited about teaching science, since I never enjoyed it in school," admits one of those teachers, Sharon Tegeler from St. Paul Lutheran School on Menard in Chicago. "But since getting these unit boxes I've really enjoyed teaching science."
Her enjoyment carries over to her students. "The kids are still talking about the experiment when we filled a cup with water and then added the washers to it to see how many washers could be added before it overflowed," she adds. They also learned a lot observing the mealworms change through the different parts of their lifecycle. It was fun watching the kids screaming as they held the mealworms in their hands for the first time too.
 
NID/CLEF Partnership

All this fun and learning has come about through a partnership of the Northern Illinois District school ministry office and the Chicagoland Lutheran Educational Foundation (CLEF). Through this partnership, teachers in 12 selected Chicago schools are receiving the detailed lessons, materials and training to teach nearly a year’s worth of science in each grade level, all at no cost. The materials include supplies for every student.

The science expertise comes from NID teachers with demonstrated excellence in teaching science who wrote the lessons and serve as the teachers at the teacher-training nights. CLEF selected the schools and obtained funding for the materials through a grant from Chicago Community Trust.

"We've noticed we need more concerted effort in training teachers," said Robin Doeden, CLEF's executive director. Now, in addition to receiving the lessons and materials, "teachers have been able to experience things before they do them with kids."

Available to All Schools

The science lessons will soon be available for purchase by all NID elementary schools. Tricia Walton, of St. John’s, Lombard, echoes Sharon Tegeler: "Science was not my strong suit when I was a teacher. This effort will bring improved instruction for our kids throughout the district."

Walton organized the science trainings, which are an outgrowth of the NID curriculum-writing project she heads. The five lead teachers who wrote the lessons and are leading the teacher-training sessions are Sheryl Duff, St. John, Wheaton; Sue Domeier, St. Luke, Itasca; Nora Holler and Deb Koehler, St. John’s, Lombard; and Diane Hinck, Zion, Marengo.

One of the five, Diane Hinck, is amazed at the speed with which the project was implemented. "Tricia has been phenomenal. It all just started this summer at a meeting in her living room. We five science teachers were all over the map, but she organized our thoughts into a working project, to plan units that fit the curriculum. The first four kits were ready in August."

"Last month one teacher said her students told her they love science now. Another participant said she barely could find time for other subjects because the kids wanted to have science all the time now."

To help stretch the grant dollars that are providing materials for the kits, the lead teachers have involved their own schools and congregations in collecting the common household materials needed for the Chicago schools.
 
"When teachers get together to share ideas," Hinck concludes, "positive things happen. Excitement and interest in science is growing. There are some really neat exchanges between teachers and schools."

Curriculum Project Helps Small Schools

The science training is an outgrowth of an NID curriculum-writing project funded through the Vernon H. Timke Living Trust and headed by Tricia Walton. Each year, she coordinates a group of elementary school teachers selected for expertise in a subject area. They write a curriculum—all the content and learning objectives to be covered by each grade level in that subject—to ensure that what is taught is up to state standards.

Thanks to their work, schools need only review it and make adaptations for their specific situation, an especially great help to smaller schools. To maintain accreditation, schools must thoroughly and regularly review their curriculum, comparing it to state standards, a time-consuming and burdensome task for a small staff.
 
The project is more than half completed, Walton explains. "We've worked through science, music, technology, art, and language arts. We’re doing math this year, and have two more years to go. The kids are the ones who benefit from this."