Teachers study science

Eleven elementary school teachers from five Native American reservations were at the University of Nebraska Medical Center Monday morning to begin a four-day workshop in science.

"This program is geared to increase the appreciation for science in schools at six Indian reservations in Nebraska and South Dakota," said Maurice Godfrey, principal investigator and associate professor of pediatrics at UNMC. "So this is a specific outreach to a very under-represented minority population, where you have high school dropout rates sometimes as high as 90 percent."

"Kids intiutively like science, so if we can demystify science and make teachers more comfortable with science, (we can) get kids to continue their enjoyment of science that started when they were really little and were exploring," he said.

It's the fourth year for the program, and some teachers, such as Judy Walz, have attended all four sessions.

Walz, who teaches fourth grade at the St. Francis Indian School in St. Francis, S.D., said that she has used information from previous sessions to help start a science club at her school that now has 45 student members. "I think with a lot of exploration and investigation, they learn a lot, and they come up with a lot of questions," she said.

"It seems like people do not relax and teach science; they think we have to have all the answers," she said. "And science is where we need to be teaching the students to find their own answers, or to figure out why it's happening."

Loretta Greene, who also teaches third grade at St. Francis, was attending the program for the first time. She said it was wonderful that the program was targeting teachers who deal with Native American students.

"I have had some experience with science, and science has always been my weak area," she said. "But I've grown to love teaching with science. I know children learn better with hands-on, and so this sounded very interesting to me because kids are naturally curious and they want to know about science."

The workshop is part of the National Center for Research Resources of the National Institutes of Health's Science Education Partnership Award grant. It includes trips to the National Weather Service offices and the University of Nebraska at Omaha's planetarium.

Godfrey said the program is designed with the intention of strengthening the science curriculum of American Indian youth on reservations in Nebraska and South Dakota. "The long-term goal of this is to increase the number of Native Americans who go into health and science professions," Godfrey said.

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