By John DiConsiglio
Freshman chemistry major Juliet Adams calls it her “teacher voice.” It’s louder and more commanding than her usual tone, but not as stern as a shout. As she stood at the head of a Jefferson Middle School Academy classroom in Washington, D.C., trying to hold the attention of 22 boisterous seventh graders, Adams slipped into her authoritative inflection. “Eyes on me in 10, nine, eight,” she counted, “seven, six, five.” Slowly, the chatter faded into a low rumble. By “three,” the class quieted and Visha Paul, a sophomore biology major, moved from desk to desk, handing out white boards and markers. “We have 45 pieces of candy,” Paul explained. “We want to give three pieces to as many of you as possible. But we have 22 students. So how many of you won’t get candy?” A hidden bag of Starbursts awaited the first to solve the problem.
For the seventh graders, the assignment was all about algebra. But Adams and Paul were learning a different lesson—skills like classroom management, student engagement and giving directions in a clear, resounding voice.
The two undergraduates are among the 50 Columbian College students enrolled in GWTeach, a partnership with GW’s Graduate School of Education and Human Development (GSEHD) that trains undergraduate STEM-subject majors to become math and science teachers.
Modeled on Uteach, an initiative founded at the University of Texas-Austin, and supported by a five-year, $1.45 million grant to GW (as part of a $22.5 million grant from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute to the National Math and Science Initiative), GWTeach invites STEM students to pair their math and science curriculum with education courses and hands-on teaching experience. Graduates earn a bachelor’s degree in their STEM field, a minor in STEM teaching and are eligible for a licensure that allows them to step directly into the teaching workforce. It’s part of an effort to address the nation’s staggering shortage of qualified teachers with strong backgrounds in STEM fields: science, technology, engineering and math.
“All of us know that our STEM pipeline is in critical need of repair,” said Columbian College Dean Ben Vinson “Through this multi-disciplinary partnership, we now have a clearer vision, a roadmap, for how to address the challenges ahead and how to be part of the solution.”
Leaders in the Classroom
For more than a decade, educators have sounded an alarm about the dismal performance of American students in math and science. Just a third of eighth-graders scored proficient in math on the 2015 National Assessment of Student Progress. In 2011 (the latest year for which statistics are available), only 32 percent rated proficient in science. At the same time, about 8 percent of teachers leave the profession each year.
With GW previously offering no undergraduate education programs, organizers see GWTeach as a way for STEM students to explore education opportunities while filling a gap for those who are already considering joining the teaching ranks.
“GWTeach is a concrete way to show our dedication toward promoting STEM-education while also making our school a destination point for students who want to become teachers,” said Physics Professor Larry Medsker, director of the GWTeach program. “We are equipping teachers with the STEM-content knowledge and the instructional expertise needed to be effective in the classroom.”
Nationally, the Uteach model is expected to produce more than 8,000 secondary math and science teachers who will teach 4.8 million students by 2020. The program’s retention rate—80 percent of Uteach graduates are still teaching after five years—outpaces the national average of just 60 percent.
At GW, STEM-students can enroll in an initial one-credit course that features a student-teaching stint in area elementary schools. Undergraduates who decide to stick with the program must fulfill 27 credits of education courses to gain their certificate; the curriculum includes as many as five sessions per semester teaching in secondary schools as well as education classes covering topics like modeling functions and classroom interactions. Students who are uncertain about pursuing an education career can still choose an 18-credit path to a STEM-teaching minor.
“GW educates a generation of leaders in many fields and these are the kind of leaders I want to see in our classrooms,” said Julia King, BA ’08, a math teacher at Jefferson Academy. A French language and literature and international affairs major while at GW, King has mentored GWTeach students like Adams and Paul.
For Adams, who plans to pursue a teaching career, the program saves the time and money of earning a STEM minor as an undergraduate and later attending graduate school education programs. “Someone like me, who feels passionately about teaching and knows what she wants to do, can jump right into a classroom after college,” she said. For Nolan Day, a sophomore biology major taking pre-med courses, GWTeach allows him to gain valuable teaching skills while also offering a fallback plan. “If med school turns out not to be what I want, Plan B is to become a high school biology teacher,” he said.
The first wave of outreach to STEM students was conducted primarily through Colonial Inauguration, emails and visits by GWTeach faculty to freshman math and sciences classes. Medsker envisions expanded efforts to attract potential students, including partnering with community colleges, targeting first-generation students and a GWTeach presence at job and education fairs. Eventually, he sees GWTeach graduates as the program’s best recruiters. “We want to foster a sense of community,” he said. “We want people to look at GWTeach as a family.”
Making STEM Fun
With a curriculum that emphasizes inquiry-based teaching—fewer lectures, more student-engagement activities—GWTeach educators design lesson plans that capture attention with games and experiments before delving into the finer points of algebra or physics. While teaching second graders about subtraction, Day started with a story about a spider cleaning her messy web and invited students to count off each strand as she washed them. In a third grade science class, Paul led students through a simple physics demonstration, stringing weights to toy cars to test how force affected motion. And a fifth grader was so excited by an Adams' science lesson that he pulled her aside after class for tips on building a particle accelerator.
“I was like: ‘Are you kidding me? You’re 10.’” she laughed. “They ask great questions. But that one stumped me.”
Master teachers—experienced instructors who have taught STEM subjects to K‒12 students—observe the classroom sessions and offer feedback on everything from lesson planning to classroom demeanor. “A huge component of [GWTeach] is field experience—early and often,” said Master Teacher Alicia Bitler, a research instructor in curriculum and pedagogy. “It gives them a realistic idea of what it’s like to be a teacher.”
Still, Adams and Paul admit they are nervous every time they step into a classroom. Days before a teaching session, the pair huddle for hours, cutting cardboard pizza into slices for a lesson on fractions and deciding who will take the lead on each activity.
“For me, classroom management is the hardest part,” Paul said. “I know all about the subject matter—the place where I need to grow is feeling confident standing in front of a class as an authority figure.”
But math teacher King gives these budding educators high marks. “Teaching is hard,” she said. “Not every lesson goes as planned. But these students really inspire me,” she said. “They have grit and perseverance. And as far as the STEM content goes, they obviously know their stuff.”