Behind the Scenes

Are you interested in science? Are you good at things? Do you like to work with nice, smart people? Is money useful for you in your pursuit of goods and services? Yes? Oh good, we're looking for you!

We're excited to announce that together with other museums and units of the Smithsonian, we will once again be offering the Smithsonian Science Education Academies for Teachers (SSEATS). SSEATS were started in 2005 to bridge the gap between formal and informal science education by combining training in science content and pedagogy with behind the scenes experiences at a wide variety of Smithsonian units, Smithsonian Affiliate partners, inquiry-based STC/ STCMS curriculum and world-class science research facilities throughout the Washington DC area.

The NSRC's Investing in Innovation (i3) initiative supports and promotes high quality, inquiry-based science education programs and helps establish infrastructures to sustain those programs for decades to come. This initiative studies the effects of the NSRC's LASER Model in grades 1-8 in three regions: North Carolina, Northern New Mexico, and Houston Independent School District.

Washington, DC-based interns will be based at NSRC's DC offices and may be asked to travel to one or more regional sites to assist with summer workshops.

Our publisher Carolina Biological has this wonderful video we would like to share of a teacher working on science with her 1st grade students. Notice the emphasis on student questions in this video...as the teacher says, the students are well on their way to being great scientist.

In addition to science, the students get a chance to use math and math vocabulary while perusing their own questions. Who wouldn't want to be a student in this wonderful classroom?

Imagine this... it is early morning, and teachers, curriculum coaches, district staff, trainers, and facilitators from all over the country are gathered in a single room. During the weeks of February 25th and March 4th, 53 regional representatives from New Mexico, North Carolina, and Houston, TX, joined by Smithsonian Science Education Center (SSEC) staff and contracted trainers, gathered in Oakland, California for an intense four-day, 30 hour training hosted by WestEd and the SSEC: the 2013 LASER i3 WestEd Facilitation Academies.

There have been a lot of changes around here, starting with our name! In order to better reflect our history and mission, we are now the Smithsonian Science Education Center (formerly National Science Resources Center). Our name has changed but our commitment hasn't: we are dedicated to a research-based approach to transforming science education and we continue to produce high-quality, inquiry-based curriculum.

This summer we will be conducting three professional development workshops together known as the Smithsonian Science Education Academies for Teachers. These professional development opportunities are special for a lot of reasons, one of which is the opportunity to work with passionate scientists, researchers, and curators. These men and women are not only subject specialists, they are enthusiastic communicators and love to connect with kindred science spirits!

Here are some of the folks that will be working with us:

Our LASER i3 grant looks at the impact of the LASER program on the STEM learning of over 75,000 students in North Carolina, New Mexico, and Houston. How do you evaluate the impact of something so enormous? What evidence for success are we seeing so far? Check out the video recorded and edited by our own Program Assistant, Dana Bulba

As many of you are done or winding down with the school year, we wanted to ask...how was it? We think ours was pretty good based on some of the feedback we got from students:QUOTE-I-learned-so-much-about

Happy summer, everyone! This is our favorite time of year because we get to meet and work with so many teachers!

We just finished our first week of LASER i3 Professional Development (PD) in Santa Fe, New Mexico! 86 science teachers, representing 17 schools and 12 districts joined us June 3-7 at Gonzales Community School for five intense days of PD.

Teachers spent the first half of the week diving deep into science content as adult learners. From first grade teachers exploring biological systems to sixth grade teachers revisiting physics formulas, participants were challenged as they became the student in inquiry-based discussions and activities.