School is out for the summer, but over the last two weeks, Washington teachers stepped back into the classroom through the Fred Hutchinson Center’s Science Education Partnership (SEP) program.
The program began in 1990. SEP’s founders pulled ideas from different scientist-teacher partnerships around the country, said co-founder and SEP director Nancy Hutchinson.
“We really emphasized the idea of partnership over outreach,” she said, noting that outreach implies an ego from the scientists.
The program, which wrapped up Wednesday, July 31, brought together 22 middle- and high school teachers from across Washington state for two and a half weeks over the summer. Teachers in the program receive a $500 stipend and graduate-level credit from the University of Washington (UW).
DNA boot camp
The first three days are spent in what Hutchinson calls “DNA boot camp,” where teachers are given a refresher on the lab lingo and techniques. Each teacher is then paired with a partner lab to do hands-on research for five days. Their partners this year include Amgen, a corporate biotechnology firm based in Interbay; Seattle Children’s Research Institute; Seattle BioMed; the UW Genome Sciences Department; and the UW and Hutchinson Center Molecular and Cellular Biology research program.
The final component of the program brings the teachers back together to create lesson or unit plans to take back to their classrooms. The teachers who participate in SEP are able to borrow specific science kits containing the equipment and materials they used during their lab time.
“After they’ve been in the labs...they come back here, and we say, ‘Now it’s time to put on your teacher hat...and think about what of this you want to take to your classroom,’” Hutchinson said.
In this phase of the program, the teachers work closely with SEP’s lead teachers, who have been invited to participate to bring in real classroom experience. Many of the lead teachers were in the SEP program at one point.
“[The teachers] kind of up the game with each other by sharing their experiences,” Hutchinson said. “This is where that concept of professional community really comes into play.”
Taking research to the classroom
Queen Anne teacher Michaela Peterson teaches biology physics and Advanced Placement (AP) biology at The Center School, a small arts-based public high school in Seattle Center with less than 300 students.
Peterson participated in SEP to gain more up-to-date skills and to have the chance to go back and do “some real science. We’re there [in the classroom] teaching about science, but our experiences are 10 years old,” she said.
Peterson worked in the UW and Fred Hutchinson microbiology research lab. Her research focused on building cells that contain a specific mutation.
“It was amazing to spend all of this time with a scientist problem-solving...and then trying things to make things work,” she said.
This experience of problem-solving is something she’ll take back to her students, who often assume science is all about memorization.
“I walked away with a unit plan for AP Biology and the ability to communicate that to my students hopefully in a very exciting way,” she said.
Peterson is lucky because she has a lot of equipment at her school, but the SEP kit will allow her to save time and money and will directly apply to the lesson. Teachers who have participated in SEP can go back and use the kits year after year. Going back to the kits “enables us to leverage the student experience, and they really remember that,” she said.
‘Enormous’ results
Mike Fellows, a biology, chemistry and bio-forensics teacher at Lakewood High School in Arlington, Wash., was Peterson’s lead teacher. Peterson was driven to come up with problem-based lessons for her students, Fellows said.
Fellows said the program is really energizing for all of the teachers involved. “There’s so many things that can happen in teaching that kind of quench that fire,” he said. “Programs like this really help ignite that fire.”
The SEP program allows students to get hands-on experience in science because most of the labs at Fred Hutchinson don’t allow students under 18. “Very few schools and students have access to these kinds of lab experiences and equipment,” Hutchinson said.
The program has received outside funding or equipment donations in the past, but this year, it is almost exclusively funded through the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. Money is an issue, though, Hutchinson said: Nearly one-third of her budget was cut this year.
“The research labs have to have the priority,” Hutchinson said, regarding funding. “[SEP] is something they feel strongly about, but at the same time, this is not the priority.”
Peterson sees programs like SEP being greatly affected by budget cuts. “That’s too bad because I think for the amount of money that’s spent, the end result is just enormous. When you have tools and build curriculum for teachers to be successful, that translates to successful students.”
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