Everyone is a Scientist and Engineer

From the start, UCISP Facilitators are paired and work closely with classroom K-5 teachers as co-teachers, to provide meaningful and relevant experiences for all participants. The co-teachers share ideas and best practices throughout the experience to deliver highly engaging experiences where students investigate and explore in fun ways that build their capacity and love of learning. A SAUSD teacher who brought the YES Program back to the classroom for her larger class shared, “My students are enjoying the [YES] program!  They look forward to joining the Zoom link everyday.  They are so excited to learn more about the ocean and the impact we can make to make it a better place for the animals.”

Within this program, parents/guardians were also able to actively participate and assist in facilitating deeper conversations with their student(s) about the science and engineering topics grounded in environmental issues. One student worked with her godfather to construct her claw modeled after a crab to engage in biomimicry. She was so proud to share her work and thinking. Another student wanted to teach their mom about jellyfish superpowers and excitedly shared with his sibling what he was learning each session. A YES parent shared, “Our son really enjoys this class especially during experiments and building something, which is related to the theme of the class purpose. He talks about something he learned from the class session to us. Especially facts about sea animals. I think this is a great program to teach our younger ones early how to appreciate our environment and to take care of it.” 

The YES Program is an science and engineering extension of the regular school day. Co-teachers are challenged and supported to think critically about how to implement the program lessons within their own classrooms. With classroom support from UCISP, co-teachers are able to teach the curricula alongside a Facilitator with their day classes as well. This program allows the co-teachers to become more comfortable teaching science and engineering activities in cross-curricular ways while providing students meaningful reflection and discourse for cultural relevance. Participants of the program learned and engaged in engineering design and the process and nature of science (dispelling the myth of the linear Scientific Method normally taught in schools). 

By exposing students to relevant topics that challenge our environment and allow them to generate and refine their ideas for solutions they initiate an understanding of the processes necessary to engage in science and engineering. Students are more confident, excited about school, see the relevance of what they are doing, are positioned as experts that are capable of sharing knowledge and asking for feedback, and begin to internalize the idea that they are already young engineers and scientists. By the second day of the program when we ask students to tell us who engineers and scientists are, we hear a resounding, “Me!” We hope that outreach programs like the UCISP YES Program have opportunities to continue into the future with support from the community.