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With California operating under a $35 billion budget deficit, it is facing
more funding cuts to its programs, including education. As a result, the announcement
in December of a partnership to support professional development and provide
new classroom materials to the earth-science teachers in its public high schools
was welcome news to the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD). Earth System
Science in the Community (EarthComm), an innovative earth-science curriculum
for high schools, was introduced nationwide in September 2000 and had been well
received in California. Training science teachers to use the EarthComm is key
to the curriculum’s success, but stringent budgets leave few schools with
funds to send teachers to training workshops.
The American Geological Institute (AGI), which publishes Geotimes, led
the development of the EarthComm curriculum. The institute approached
ChevronTexaco with a proposal: would the corporation provide financial support
for EarthComm training workshops in Los Angeles? Yes, they would, was
the reply.
“As a company, we place a very high value on the quality of K through 12
education in the communities we serve,” says Don Paul, vice president and
chief technology officer of ChevronTexaco. “We are proud to be part of
this partnership.” Noting that he began his career with ChevronTexaco as
a geologist, Paul added: “Earth science is so important because it is a
naturally integrative discipline that brings together the sciences of physics,
chemistry, biology and mathematics to help us better understand what impacts
all of us everyday.”
The new partnership, known as the Earth System Science in the Community Teacher
Enhancement Project, joins AGI, ChevronTexaco and the L. A. school district.
At a December announcement of the partnership held at North Hollywood High School,
LAUSD Superintendent Roy Romer used the occasion to share his growing fascination
with earth science.
“I’ve got a practical problem,” he explained to students at the
press conference. “I’ve got an earthquake fault under Belmont School
and I realized that I had to get a better understanding of what was going on.
So I went to a geologist and asked for some books. What I’ve learned is
that there are plates moving under Earth’s surface. Where those plates
come together, you get seismic activity, such as the San Andreas Fault.”
Romer’s challenge with Belmont School brought him into the world of earthquakes
and volcanoes and the painstaking research of many scientists. “Science
is all about the techniques of exploration — of thinking things through,
looking at the evidence and seeing how the evidence can be used to prove a theory,”
he told the students. “That’s what this grant is about. We want to
give you the tools to be creative thinkers
throughout your life.”
Over three years, ChevronTexaco will provide $360,000 for student books, teaching
guides and classroom equipment kits. LAUSD will provide training pay, expertise
and follow-up to the 300 teachers expected to attend the workshops. AGI, led
by Director of Education Michael J. Smith, will supervise the workshops and
provide stipends to the mentor coaches (teachers within LAUSD who piloted EarthComm
in their classrooms and are experienced at teacher professional development).
It’s About Time Inc., the publisher of EarthComm, is offering curriculum
materials at a reduced price.
EarthComm is funded by grants from the National Science Foundation and
the AGI Foundation. The curriculum was developed to comply with the 1996 National
Science Education Standards and other major curriculum reform proposals, which
recommend a new approach to teaching science that emphasizes the development
of critical thinking processes. Rather than skimming lightly across many topics
in a broad course of study, students will learn the analytical skills of real
scientists. In the process, they are introduced to the exacting procedures of
inquiry and a more in-depth exploration of the most important earth-science
concepts.
While the EarthComm curriculum dramatically expands the students’
learning environment, it also places more demands on teachers. Beyond traditional
classroom and lab activities, teachers must guide their students through fieldwork
projects that focus on geoscience issues of concern to their local community.
Students must also be taught telecommunications skills to do Internet-based
research, gather scientific data and interact with other learning communities.
Fifty-eight teachers (recruited as two-person teams from the same school) and
four mentor coaches took part in the first EarthComm training workshop
on Jan. 6 through 8. The workshop focused on the “Earth’s Dynamic
Geosphere” module and covered components within its three divisions —
volcanoes, plate tectonics and earthquakes. Workshop leaders devised a suite
of activities that teachers could readily incorporate into their classrooms
and which would prepare their students for the California State Science Standards
exams. The teachers also will work in a computer lab to become familiar with
the EarthComm Web site.
More than half of the workshop participants had bachelor’s degrees in science
and another 35 percent held master’s degrees. Five out of the 58 had degrees
in geology or earth science. Most teachers reported that they had taken up to
two earth-science classes in college; however, 28 percent had never had a college-level
earth-science course. On average, they had 10 years teaching experience, seven
of those years spent in high schools.
On the first day of the training workshop, the teachers took a pretest to determine
their knowledge of earth-science content. Their responses indicated that they
understood the volcanoes section best and felt least secure about plate tectonics.
On the final day, teachers took a post-workshop test, which revealed significant
gains in their knowledge of earth science content. Most of the teachers plan
to include elements of EarthComm in their classes this spring, introducing
close to 5,500 Los Angeles students to the new curriculum in 152 classes.
The partnership provides support for 100 teachers per year, and a workshop to
train 42 more teachers has been scheduled for the week of April 14 through 18.
The goal is to reach all the earth-science classrooms in Los Angeles’ 49
high schools, 20 magnet schools (often attached to a high school) and nine multilevel
schools (grades K through 12 or 6 through 12) by the end of three years.
The ultimate goal is to reach all students in LAUSD taking any course that covers
California earth science standards. An advisory board of ChevronTexaco and LAUSD
staff will review the partnership’s progress.
ChevronTexaco is tracking the program with interest. “We have ongoing investments
throughout the state,” says Rod Spackman, Manager of Government and Public
Affairs for Chevron Products Company. “But this partnership is unique among
the kinds of grants that we make to school districts. Before we take it anywhere
else, we want to see that it is successful in Los Angeles.”
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