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Teachers help youths speak science

Staff photo by CLIFF McBRIDE

Science teacher Kathryn Bylsma of John Long Middle School works with a student playing an educational game.

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By RONNIE BLAIR rblair@tampatrib.com

The Tampa Tribune

Published: November 8, 2009

WESLEY CHAPEL - Science teacher Kathryn Bylsma noticed something during the years as she tried to engage her middle school students in their lessons.

Forget grasping the scientific concepts. Students often struggled just to get past the science vocabulary.

"Terminology is what keeps them from understanding," said Bylsma, who teaches at Long Middle School and is Pasco County's 2009 Teacher of the Year.

This week, Bylsma and fellow Long Middle teacher Darcy Cleek will share tips for penetrating the language barrier when they speak at the National Science Teachers Association's regional conference in Fort Lauderdale.

Bylsma and Cleek are among several Tampa Bay area teachers who will lead workshops or make presentations at the conference, which runs Thursday through Saturday.

Teachers who attend can choose from a plethora of learning opportunities. The conference, under the theme "Diving into the Next Generation of Science," will offer more than 300 presentations and workshops on biology, chemistry, physics, environmental science and other subjects.

"What an opportunity to learn," said Bylsma, who plans to be both teacher and student at the conference, sitting in on workshops when she's not making her own presentation.

The National Science Teachers Association holds three regional conferences and one national conference each year. The association isn't sure how many people will attend the Florida conference, but regional conferences typically draw about 2,000 to 4,000 participants, the association reported.

Because the recession hit Florida especially hard, the association has offered scholarships to help defray the costs of attending for some new science teachers.

Francis Eberle, executive director of the association, said the regional conferences are a good opportunity for teachers to spend a few days with others who are energized and knowledgeable about science.

Science education lagging

It's important that the nation do a better job of teaching science, especially at the elementary school level, so students can compete internationally, Eberle said. After the No Child Left Behind Act took effect in 2002, many schools began devoting less time to the subject and instead shifted the focus to reading and math, he said. Those are the subjects students must score well in for schools to meet the requirements of No Child Left Behind

A 2007 study by the Center on Education Policy showed that time spent on science in elementary schools had dropped an average of 28 percent nationally since No Child Left Behind was enacted.

"In some places we've heard anecdotally that administrators have told teachers they shouldn't be teaching" science, Eberle said.

That's unfortunate, he said, because a good science program boosts both science and literacy scores.

Another challenge facing science education, Eberle said, is that many teachers lack content knowledge. That's often true at the elementary school level, but happens even in middle and high schools where instructors teach more specialized courses, he said.

"In high schools, sometimes a teacher with a biology background will be teaching physics," Eberle said.

Bill Panczner, a retired teacher from Sickles High in Tampa, said via e-mail that one way to improve science education is to recruit actual scientists to the classroom.

"This is rare but it does happen," said Panczner, who will make a presentation at the Fort Lauderdale conference titled "Bringing the Amazing High-Energy Universe into Focus."

Panczner's presentation is about NASA's NuSTAR project, which is tentatively scheduled for launch in August 2011. Nu- STAR, or Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array, is to be the first focusing, high-energy, X-ray telescope in space. NuSTAR will search for black holes, map supernova explosions and study the most extreme active galaxies.

"This is a very exciting project," Panczner said. "I am also showing how to use the science of NuSTAR in the classroom."

Improvements wanted

The National Science Teachers Association conference comes to a Florida at a time when there's been a call to improve science education in the state. In 2008, the state Board of Education approved new science standards in an effort to enhance students' knowledge of the subject and to ratchet up scores on the science portion of the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test.

"We're fortunate to have it in our state," Bylsma said of the conference.

Bylsma is no novice when it comes to speaking to other teachers. She made a presentation last year at a Florida Association of Science Teachers conference.

Bylsma and Cleek also do workshops for Pasco County teachers. When Bylsma learned a National Science Teachers Association conference was planned in Florida, she figured she and Cleek should take their "Miscommunication: How to Make Sense of Science Vocabulary" lecture to the next level.

"I told her, 'I'm presenting this thing. You in?'" Bylsma said.

Several other Tampa Bay area educators are scheduled to make presentations at the conference. They include Jeneane Maddaloni and Christina Page of Pasco High in Dade City, Corey Peloquin and Julie Ball of Coleman Middle in Tampa, Debarati Ghosh of Hillsborough Community College, and Pam Caffery, Mary Rafferty and Jonathan Gerlach of the Hillsborough County school district.

Reporter Ronnie Blair can be reached at (813) 259-7065.

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