Beginning this summer, Rhode Island high school biology and neuroscience teachers will receive materials and training from Brown professors and graduate students. A three-year, $636,000 grant by the National Center for Research Resources earlier this month will fund the program, called Project ARISE: Advancing Rhode Island Science Education.
Project ARISE will begin in August with a two-week workshop on inquiry-based approaches for teachers. During the school year, instructors will have access to mobile lab equipment, supplies and trained lab consultants for their classes and will meet every two months to evaluate what they've gained from the program. In the spring, a "nature of discovery symposium" will invite participating teachers and students to campus to present results of projects generated by the program.
Lecturer in Neuroscience John Stein, Senior Lecturer in Education Lawrence Wakeford and Jennifer Aizenman, a scientist and curriculum design specialist in the division of summer and continuing studies, first proposed the program. It is intended to help the state's science teachers meet new science standards for public schools approved last year by the Rhode Island Board of Regents for Elementary and Secondary Education.
"It really gives teachers a chance to bring concepts to their students that are relevant and important today," Aizenman said of the program. "Everyone eats genetically modified foods. How are they made? Why are they in our food supply? Should we be concerned? Our whole way of teaching this content is going to be an inquiry-based way of learning. Science is all about asking questions."
This year's workshop, which will be held from Aug. 6 to 17, will provide teachers with four model lesson plans on subjects such as detecting genetically modified foods using polymerase chain reaction, using DNA analysis to study human ancestry and evolution, sensing oxygen and carbon dioxide to assess cellular respiration and measuring EKGs, EEGs and nerve cell activity with recording equipment.
"What is truly exciting about ARISE is that it offers teachers professional development training in cutting-edge science research, using the latest technology that is not always available in public schools," said Linda Jzyk '74, an education specialist for science and technology at the Rhode Island Department of Education. "It will bring us up to speed in biology, biotechnology and physiology in 2007."
Tony Beck, program director for the Science Education Partnership Award that provided the grant for the program, wrote in an e-mail to The Herald that initiatives like Project ARISE bring many important lessons to teachers, students and their families.
"We also want to show all students that they have? the talent and opportunities to envision careers in medicine, clinical? research, drug discovery and the basic sciences," he wrote.
Fifteen teachers from Rhode Island high schools will be admitted into the ARISE program each of the program's three years. Jyzk said teachers are encouraged to apply as part of a team from their school, since collaboration among teachers will ensure the program has a lasting effect on school curriculums. She said special consideration will be given to teachers from high-need school districts, defined as those where at least 20 percent of the student population receives free or reduced price lunches.
Aubrey Frank GS and Megan Gasparovic GS will help instruct teachers this year as part of Project ARISE, and William Holmes GS will be in charge of trouble-shooting when mobile units are brought into classrooms this fall, Aizenman said.
Holmes, a first-year graduate student in the department of Molecular Biology, Cell Biology and Biochemistry, said the ARISE program offered him the opportunity to have a positive effect on students. "Here at Brown, we are doing cutting-edge science and (through Project ARISE we are) teaching that same science to teachers, who in turn teach it to kids," he said.
