Chemical Education Today
Science Service Learning by Ann Cartwright Department of Science, San Jacinto College, Pasadena, Texas 77505
[email protected] What is service learning? It is usually students performing community service in activities that involve active learning. This is not merely volunteering. The work must relate to and reinforce classroom learning. For example, an architecture student might work with Habitat for Humanity as service learning. What is science service learning? The definition we use is college students helping elementary and secondary school students learn to perform hands-on experiments. Some school curricula include experiments, such as testing the water supply of the local community or testing paint in older homes for lead content. We use a more limited definition because of the needs in our community. There are many articles in the literature about service learning, but relatively few discussions of science service learning. One example article about service learning (1) illustrates what science service learning can do for college students. Specifically, Esson, Stevens-Truss, and Thomas claim that, for college students, positive service-learning outcomes include (1): • Improved cognitive goals • Improved course-related skills and self-reported learning outcomes • Increased academic, interpersonal, and leadership skills • Increased community engagement • Exposure to career development opportunities • Improved self-esteem, self-efficacy, and self-confidence • Increased ability to apply course concepts to new real-world situations
When I first read over this list, I was skeptical. It seemed that it promised too much. But on a second reading, I thought, “Yes, I have seen those things happen with my students!” Science Service Learning at San Jacinto College Science service learning involvement at San Jacinto College (SJC) Central Campus science department had modest beginnings. In October 1990, I invited a class from the Education Center Lab School (a part of the Child Development Department of SJC) to visit our lab. In keeping with Halloween later that month, I dressed up as a witch and did all the demonstrations myself. It was not science service learning, but, for me, it planted the seed. In 1994, I invited another class from the Education Center Lab School and this time involved my students. We started on a modest scale and had four stations staffed by chemistry students to help the children. The slime at that first encounter was too runny, so I spent an afternoon experimenting with amounts of ingredients. That experience retaught me: always practice the experiments in advance! All of our experiments have evolved and changed over the years. In 1997 we expanded our program and began celebrating National Chemistry Week by inviting an entire grade level from
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one of the local school districts to visit our laboratories, with half of the children (50-70) visiting each day over two days. Over the years, we have worked with kindergarten students through middle school students. We have focused on fourth graders for the past few years. After we meet the buses at 9:00 a.m., we store the students' lunches and give each one a goodie-bag that includes information about San Jacinto College. We take them to a chemistry lab set up with 10 stations and conduct hands-on experiments led by at least two college students at each station. The children spend from 5 to 8 min at a station and move from one to another around the room. This usually takes about 90 min. Then we divide the children into two groups. Half go to biology and the other half go to geology or physics, depending on which is available. The children spend 30 min in geology or biology and then switch places. After lunch, which is usually outside, we wrap up the day with a grand finale liquid nitrogen show. The children leave at 1:00 p.m. In 1997, the SJC Department of Science started hosting the local school district's regional secondary school science fair. We also serve as judges for two or three elementary schools. During the secondary school science fair, we set up a lab with several stations of hands-on experiments for the contestants to conduct after judging is completed, while they wait for the bus or their parents to pick them up. For the elementary schools, our students are trained to serve as judges. Each student volunteer has about 15-20 min of training. We explain the scoring system ahead of time, provide a list of questions to ask the children, and give each student a map of where the elementary schools are located. I have an old trifold display board from a previous fair, and I role-play the part of the elementary school child. My students listen to me, ask questions, and score my project. When we arrive at the schools, the college students work in pairs or trios, and each project is judged by three groups. The college students take their job very seriously. You would think they were conferring a Nobel Prize! Also in 1997, we started science nights at elementary schools. I would not recommend that someone just randomly contact school principals and ask them to set up a science night. (If I had done that, the principal might have thought I was crazy and trying to sell something. I confess to a certain eccentricity, but I am not crazy, and I am trying to sell something: a positive attitude toward science.) Usually, we have a connection to the school because our children attend, or former students teach at the school, and so on. I visit the school prior to the event to meet the principal and some of the teachers, explaining what we will do and what they need to do to prepare for the event, including providing a large room (usually the cafeteria), placing tables around the edge, and covering the tables for protection. On the day of the event, Ruben Ramirez (the lab supervisor at SJC Central Campus) and I arrive at 4:00 p.m. with two vans
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r 2010 American Chemical Society and Division of Chemical Education, Inc. pubs.acs.org/jchemeduc Vol. 87 No. 10 October 2010 10.1021/ed100708d Published on Web 08/30/2010
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Chemical Education Today
full of materials; we unload the supplies, and arrange them at workstations around the room. The student volunteers, usually about 30, arrive at 5:00 p.m. to meet their co-workers and divide up parts of the hands-on experiments. At 5:30 p.m., the doors open to students, parents, and siblings. We close at 7:00 p.m. The last science night we offered had almost 500 people in attendance. We have learned to have chairs and bottles of water for the student volunteers. This is hard work!
Science service learning efforts at SJC more recently include these events: • Spring 2008: Four “Family Science” nights at elementary schools and two science fairs • Fall 2008 and 2009: Celebration of National Chemistry Week and adoption of an elementary school • Spring 2010: Three science fairs; 130 fourth graders visited the laboratories; hosting Expanding Your Horizons in Science and Math program for seventh- and eighth-grade girls
Adopting an elementary school was something new for us and is one of the most rewarding experiences we have had with science service learning. For the past two years, we visited all seven fourth-grade classes during the fall term, carrying in all the equipment and materials to do one detailed experiment for each class over about six weeks. These were consumer chemistry experiments: for example, testing types of toothpaste or detergents. Two college students worked with four or five fourth-grade students. The teachers and students make trifold display boards showing the projects. We had a miniscience fair (one trifold display board per class) in November just prior to the start of the individual science fair projects for third and fourth graders. We returned in the spring to judge the school science fair and all the fourth graders visited our laboratories. For the school adoption project, I had pre- and postvisit surveys for the college student volunteers. Before the visits, the college students never mentioned the children, but the postvisit surveys always mentioned working with them.
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Examples of college students' comments: • “Young students really look up to us college students.” • “I saw a few students get very excited when they grasped the concept. I have a sense of gratification.” • “I've never been so involved in a class before. It inspires me to be a better student and take advantage of opportunities.”
Examples of the elementary students' letters to us:
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Vol. 87 No. 10 October 2010
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• “Your college deserves 400 billion rounds of applause, but I'll be dead probably before I get to one million claps.” • “Now my sister and I are starting a small science lab in my bedroom.”
Examples of the teachers' and administrators' comments: • “With the college students bringing in real scientific equipment and lowering the student to teacher ratio, students are able to really be involved in the process.” • “I was especially pleased to hear how your students were able to relate to our learning disabled and limited English students.”
Summary Over the past few years, we have been so fortunate to make a positive science impact, benefitting not just our students, but also our wider community. We started this before we knew it had the name “science service learning”; it just seemed like the right thing to do. Acknowledgment Special thanks to the Greater Houston Section of the American Chemical Society for providing funding for the program. Also, thanks to the many students and lab assistants, who provide the power behind our dreams. If we can dream it, they can make it happen. Literature Cited 1. Esson, J. M.; Stevens-Truss, R.; Thomas, A. J. Chem. Educ. 2005, 82, 1168–1173.
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r 2010 American Chemical Society and Division of Chemical Education, Inc.
