GRASSHOPR End of the Year Report
2016-2017

Submitted by the GRASSHOPR Coordinating Committee

GCC Graduate Students:

Ezen Choo (PhD Pharmacology)

Carolyn Diefenderfer (PhD Biochemistry, Molecular & Cell Biology)

Christine Diepenbrock (PhD Plant Breeding & Genetics)

Steve Halaby (PhD Biochemistry, Molecular & Cell Biology)

Ryan Post (PhD Neurobiology & Behavior)

Ben Savitzky (PhD Physics)

Public Service Center Advisor: Austin Fay

Program Statistics

List of Participants

Ithaca City School District

Name Course Title School Teacher Grade
Cinnamon Mittan Friendly not freaky (Frogs) Belle Sherman Monica Lang 3
Olivia Graham A Bird’s Eye View Belle Sherman Jonathan Fields, Lisa Sahasrabudhe, Ashley Paolangeli 5
Jennifer Uehling A Bird’s Eye View Belle Sherman Elementary School Ashley Paolangeli, Jonathan Fields, Lisa Sahasrabudhe 5
Rebecca Wilkes Power of Plants: Understanding How Plants Help our Environment Beverly J. Martin Elementary Christine Barley 4
Katherine Delaney Go Slow Woah Beverly J. Martin Elementary Sheri McWhorter K
Rose Tatarsky Sensory Worlds: Evolution of the Senses Across Species Beverly J. Martin Elementary Jenna Hallas 3
Sabrina Kelch Miss Beverly J. Martin Elementary Christine Barley 4
Lori Koenick Microbe Mania Beverly Martin Elementary School Nancy Braun K
Gwen Beacham What is a Cell? Cayuga Heights Elementary School Sierra Meyers Emberley 5
Carolyn Diefenderfer What is a Cell? Cayuga Heights Elementary School Sierra Meyers 5
Oriana Y. Teran Pumar THE WILD AND WACKY WORLD OF MICROBES! DeWitt Middle School Mrs. Catherine Exantus 7
Greg Vogel Creating New Crops: Genetics and Plant Breeding DeWitt Middle School Wayne Gottlieb 7
Garrison Komaniecki What is solubility? Fall Creek Elementary Allison Anderson, Abigail Bokaer, Rose McGrath K
Cybelle Tabilas Of Microbes and Men Fall Creek Elementary Alexandria Spencer 2-5
Simon Frueh GRASSHOPR Fall Creek Elementary School Alexandra Spencer 2-5
Ellie Larson Of Microbes and Men Fall Creek Elementary School Alexandra Spencer and Catherine Hart 2-4
Scott Wehrwein Photons to Filters: The Science of Digital Photography Ithaca High School Deborah Lynn 11-12
Sara Sirois Soil microbes: world at your feet New Roots Charter, Ithaca David Streib 9-10
Marika Nell It’s a Watery World Northeast Elementary School Paula Kilts 4
Katherine Holmes Insect Communication South Hill Elementary Therese Zadi 3
Julia Miller Amazing Insects South Hill Elementary Emily Powell 2
Zoe Getman-Pickering The very hungry caterpillar and the Giving tree South Hill Elementary Emily Powell, and two others 2

Trumansburg School District

Name Course Title School Teacher Grade
Laura Manella Mind Games Russel I. Doig Middle School Janice Beckley 5
Lisa Watkins Exploring Water’s Journey from Field to Faucet Russel I. Doig Middle School Bill Begeal 6
Joel Tripp Mind Games Trumansburg Middle School Janice Beckley 5
Allison Truhlar Exploring water’s journey from field to faucet Trumansburg Middle School Bill Begeal 6
Catherine Spirito It’s a Watery World Trumansburg Middle School Bill Begeal 6
Geoff Pleiss Build Your Own Computer Game Trumansburg Middle School Sue Stein 6-8

Lansing School District

Name Course Title School Teacher Grade
Jaclyn Bubnell Biochemistry is Basic Lansing Sheryl Williams 4
Samuel Barnett Exploring the Microbiome: Microbes In, On, and Around Us Lansing Middle School Gwen Beck 6
Samantha Scott Exploring the Microbiome: Microbes In, On, and All Around Us! Lansing Middle School Gwen Beck 6

Newfield School District

Name Course Title School Teacher Grade
Zoe Dubrow I don’t remember but it was something like the wonders of plant biology Newfield Elementary Cindy Baker 4
Chris Peritore More than just greenery: plant adaption, germination and genetics Newfield Elementary School Cindy Baker 4
Carolyn Chlebek Engineering Organs Newfield Middle School Anita Ching 6
Abigail Miller The Science of Growing Bioluminescent Algae Newfield Middle School Lauren Hamilton 7

Dryden School District

Name Course Title School Teacher Grade
Sara Carpenter CSI:Cabbage Dryden High School Karen Taylor 12

Enfield School District

Name Course Title School Teacher Grade
Lisa Hiura Squishy Brains and Beastly Behaviors! Enfield Elementary Tara McMeekin 3
Caitlyn Finton Squishy Brains and Beastly Behaviors Enfield Elementary Taura McMeekin 3
Jennifer Garner Food System Explorers: A Sensory-Based Curriculum for Kids Enfield Elementary Joanna Brautigam 4

McGraw School District

Name Course Title School Teacher Grade
Miwa Wenzel Plants, Germs, Dinosaurs and Kids: We’re all built from genes McGraw Elementary Jacqueline Niver 5

Graduate Student Feedback

Skills Gained Through GRASSHOPR

Rapport with Teachers

Usefulness of Program Requirments

Overall Graduate Student Satisfaction with GRASSHOPR

Have Your Career Plans Been Influenced by GRASSHOPR?

Yes: 10 students

No : 30 students

How:

  • “I would like to ultimately be a professor at a small liberal arts college where most of my job will evolve around regularly teaching courses. Though I plan to be teaching college level classes, being able to teach immunology concepts to elementary school aged kids is a good first step.”
  • “I already am very interested in incorporating a lot of outreach into my hopeful future career in academia, and this experience really solidified my desire to do that. I had a great time teaching, and the kids were incredibly engaged and excited - it was a super rewarding experience!”
  • “I would like to be a faculty member and teach students in a collegiate setting so teaching experience is helpful to my career goals.”
  • “Reinforced that I enjoy working with kids.”
  • “I have always enjoyed outreach and teaching, GRASSHOPR was a unique opportunity for graduate students and post-docs. It was a way to get experience teaching without the commitment of a teaching assistantship!”
  • “I greatly enjoyed teaching a group of 3rd graders, and I want to make sure outreach is a future aspect of my academic career. I want to design a course for high school students and even get students involved with my research as part of a community research project.”
  • “I realized how awesome and important it is to communicate your work to younger audiences. They really are the future! Next year I’m going to work at a science communications and policy office at NIH, where hopefully i’ll be able to do some of this.”
  • “I think they have changed somewhat. I used to be much more involved in elementary outreach in high school and some of college. Participating in GRASSHOPR reminded me how much I enjoy doing outreach with younger students, and because of that, I will probably try to incorportate this more in my career, either through GRASSHOPR or other programs when I leave Cornell. Thanks for this opportunity!”
  • “I wouldn’t want to become a teacher, but I became way more comfortable with kids and signing up for outreach involving children”
  • “GRASSHOPR has not changed my plans, but reinforced my desire to be involved in science outreach throughout my career”

Graduate Student Advice and Reflection

Best part of GRASSHOPR

Adapted and condensed from survey responses

  • “Coming back to the classroom for our third lesson two weeks after our second one and having the students be able to remember and explain the concepts we’d taught in lesson two.”
  • “I enjoyed how enthusiastic the kids were when we actually got to do a hands-on activity. They compared the experiment I designed to a”elementary school" experiment, and said mine was a lot of fun, unlike the “other experiments” they had done."
  • “The best part was getting kids excited about my field of science.”
  • Interaction with students and students getting excited about learning science
  • “I really enjoyed working in a school that was farther out of town - felt like I was making a bigger difference in their lives.”
  • “Having the opportunity, through GRASSHOPR, to reach local students”
  • “Having the opportunity to be creative in lesson planning”

Worst part of GRASSHOPR

Adapted and condensed from survey responses

  • Teaching mini-lesson to too many (4) periods. Lost track of what was taught!
  • Classroom management
  • Designing a lesson that reaches all students
  • Transport time
  • Substitute teacher - difficulties with classroom management
  • Teacher communication in lesson planning
  • Scheduling
  • Teacher speaking negatively about students
  • Timing of lessons - not enough class time for lesson
  • GRASSHOPR workshop requirments
  • Nothing!

Other Advice

Adapted and condensed from survey responses

  • Meet your teacher(s) ahead of time - they know their classrooms and students the best.
  • “Beware of the prep time! Get enough people on your teaching team that you don’t resent the time prepping for lessons takes from you research/school work.”
  • Be patient
  • Engage the students as much as possible
  • “Don’t overthink your presentation and activity! Sometimes the simpler the better.”
  • “Less talking, more doing is the way to go.”
  • “Meet the teacher ahead of time, observe a class, consider giving a simple pre- and post-test that goes along with your learning objectives, and don’t stress about being the perfect teacher - the kids will appreciate your effort and will be excited as long as you are excited!”
  • “When writing a lesson plan, it helps to estimate how long each activity will take so you can best prepare for how much/little content you will cover in each lesson. It is amazing how little you end up actually teaching in just an hour- so having a clear schedule helps you anticipate this.”
  • “Try to make your lesson plans over winter break or in times when you have little other work to do. It is difficult to make lesson plans when you are actively involved in research and/or classes.”
  • “Have fun with it! Be prepared but also be willing to go with the flow.”
  • “Be aware that the students in your class may veer the course in a different direction than originally planned.”
  • “Definitely be willing to adjust your plans after your first lesson! Our lesson plans changed substantially after meeting with the students, but incorporating what we learned while we taught worked really well.”

GRASSHOPR Improvement Comments

Adapted and condensed from survey responses

  • “It would be good to have some of the workshops earlier, especially for those of us who did our courses during the winter break.”
  • “The training seems like an important part of the process, but either because the workshop I went to was bad or the volunteers I co-taught with were already experienced, I didn’t feel like there was much support for crafting a lesson plan that would benefit the students had I been doing this with other novice teachers.”
  • “Maybe the matching process could be improved. We got matched with a group for which our topic was a bit too high.”
  • “Maybe have a more comprehensive workshop on developing a lesson plan, another on inter-group communication for effective teaching.”
  • “Moving the workshops/meetings to a more central location would be helpful. From my experience they were pretty far across campus. Last year, the workshop I went to was taught by a teacher and that seemed to be more helpful overall.”
  • “Make sure the teachers are more aware of the lessons they are requesting - my teacher did not want me to come in for all the sessions I had filled out my application for (I did 2 sessions instead of the 4 I suggested), and she did not seem pleased that my topic did not fit perfectly into her curriculum”
  • Make sure expectations are clear for teacher-fellow partnership
  • “I would include a better way for participants to communicate with each other, like a Slack chat or something.”
  • “Have more grade oriented training or handouts”
  • “Add some component for people who have done their course before but what to improve or expand it.”
  • “As I said before, an end of semester event would be an awesome way to discuss what worked really well and talk to other people in the program- it would also be a great way to get new officers for the next year!”
  • “It would be nice to have more opportunities to run lesson plans by other people. I know there were some people during the orientation meeting who invited us to reach out, but I think it would be really neat to have some semi-informal meetups of GRASSHOPR teachers to share and critique lesson plans.”

Selected Promotional Statements: Graduate Students

  • “One of the best experiences in GRASSHOPR was during a lesson we taught on avian biodiversity. When asked why it’s important to protect and maintain biodiversity, a young student explained thoughtfully,”Well, it’d be really sad and boring if there were only a few birds in the world." I couldn’t agree more!"
  • “To the three classes of kindergarteners I taught, I was known as”Sonny the Scientist." One time, as I was leaving for the day, all the kids were shouting “Bye, Sonny the Scientist!,” “Goodbye!,” “BYEEEE!” and one of the little girls yelled as loud as she could “I LOVE YOU!” It had nothing to do with science or my lessons, but it made me laugh and showed me that I was able to make a very positive connection with these kids through GRASSHOPR."

Teacher Feedback

Course Subject Impact and Relevance

Rapport with Graduate Student Instructors

Overall Teacher Satisfaction with GRASSHOPR

Teacher Advice and Reflection

In what areas should training be offered to better equip graduate students for coming into a K-12 classroom?

Adapted and condensed from survey responses

  • Lesson plan development.
  • Designing handouts/worksheets
  • “Very young children (Kindergarten, 1st grade) learn differently from older students. I gave the GRASSHOPR students guidance in our planning sessions, and they learned quickly from their own interactions. However, I feel that they would benefit from some additional preparation on child development/learning processes.”
  • “They should be alerted to the fact that when teaching Honors classes, they can pretty much depend on student participation to keep the lesson going. But, for non-Honors, student participation is NOT guaranteed and the whole lesson cannot depend on it.”
  • “Some attention to level-appropriate questioning strategies would be helpful. There were times where one of the presenters would pose a question to the class and then get a bit confused on how to proceed when he didn’t get a response.”
  • “I think it would be helpful to discuss with grad students about timing of lessons and strategies/ideas for managing kids going off topic or all wanting a turn. We created a”parking lot" in my room for kids to write their questions on post-its during lessons. We came back to the post-its at the end of the lesson and the grad students answered as many as they could in the time they had left. This prevented students from taking us on a million tangents. At first, the lessons were going long as they the grad students were allowing students to all respond/answered all questions as they came up. Strategies such as the parking lot or turning to tell a partner (so all students get a chance to speak) and then having 1-2 share out work great. We had a few instances where the lessons went a lot longer than planned. We were able to be flexible and continue but had we had another place to be (gym etc) we would have had to cut lessons short."

Best part of GRASSHOPR

Adapted and condensed from survey responses

  • “Being able to do experiments with students having the perspective of a researcher in my classroom to guide the experiments.”
  • Hands-on aspect of lessons!
  • Enthusiastic, friendly, knowledgable grad students
  • “There were many”best" parts. All three CU students were exemplary in their dedication, preparation, creativity, and desire to connect with young students. The equipment and materials they were able to provide were a unique opportunity for my students. Additionally, I learned a great deal in both subject content, disciplinary practicies, and models for teaching and learning."
  • “The best part of the GRASSHOPR experience was that my students got an opportunity to see career paths that they could explore.”
  • “I really enjoyed working with the three individuals who came to my classroom. They did an exceptional job keeping kids engaged and I was happy to work with them”
  • “Best: seeing students engaged with a challenging math question and seeing math in a different light. One student in my Algebra class proved especially talented, coming up answers to questions faster than any other student (to the point where I needed to prompt him with further questions and challenges!)”
  • “I got to learn along with the students. He also presented a subtopic in a way that will improve my approach in the future. And he was a welcome and exciting presence in the classroom for the students.”
  • “The best part was that my students, who are quite needy emotionally and intellectually, were engaged and still talk about the lessons to this day. There was no worst part of the experience- really.”
  • “The students were very inspired. The level of knowledge that the grad students imparted on my students was incredible. They were able to share so much detail/examples/specifics about topics that I know only a little about.”
  • “The best part was watching my students engage in relevant, hands-on Science activities, which direct connected to our curriculum as well as Common Core Standards.”
  • “Every lesson was effectively planned and taught. They took the time to meet with me, over their break, well in advance so I knew when they were coming in, and what the lessons were going to be.”
  • “The students did an excellent job relating to the kids. In addition to the excellent presentations and preparations that enabled the students to be successful, the Cornell students were like a bridge to a larger world.”

Worst part of GRASSHOPR

Adapted and condensed from survey responses

  • Too short - would like to have graduate students in the classroom for a longer period of time
  • Juggling communication and setting up program with teaching responsibilities
  • Unexpected time needed for mentoring of graduate student
  • Tying into class curriculum (either subject or timing)
  • Graduate instructors that didn’t follow through (1 case)
  • “I was signed up for two programs. I answered an email for the second program in February, sent one more email in April, but never heard back from the students.”
  • That the experience had to end
  • “There was no”worst" part. I had a phenomenal experience. Working with experts in the field is central to Ithaca City School District’s approach to Case Study learning, and this was an easy and fun way to gain access to willing and capable experts."

Other Comments/Suggestions

  • “I would love to be able to work with the same group of students again throughout the year. Would people be willing to offer a fall, winter, and spring program about other science topics?”
  • “What about contacting the various principals & seeing if your students could come talk with the staff about the programs during an all staff meeting-bringing some of the materials along to entice?!”
  • “I learned about the program in mid-fall, when it was time to apply. It was forwarded to all elementary teachers by a district science/prof development teacher. The application process was simple and straightforward, but I didn’t have a full idea of what the program would be like. I recommend that you make a 5-10 minute video or slideshow about the program to show to teachers in late August, during in-service planning days. That way, teachers can think ahead to how they might work a GRASSHOPR mini-course into their curriculum.”
  • “I had a hard time choosing a program based on the descriptions provided. If more details could be provided that would be really helpful. I didn’t realize programs changed based on the graduate student. If more details could be provided then teachers could make choices that would best fit their curriculum.”
  • “I think this is an excellent program, and a really important way for students in high school to get to see what students in graduate school are doing. This is especially true for seniors getting ready to go to college, as it gives them a view of what they might be doing in 4-5 years. So some outreach to senior preparation programs might be helpful.”
  • “More physics related options”
  • “It was great, I don’t think you should change anything.”
  • “We got a lot of information over email. Some people miss things when they sit in their inbox Perhaps do a presentation at the beginning of the school year (ICSD orientation) or send hard copy fliers out to schools with information on how to apply.”
  • “Thank you for offering this to our local schools. It is wonderful enrichment for all of my students.”

Selected Promotional Statements: Teachers

  • “The GRASSHOPR program was a fabulous compliment to what I was already doing in the classroom. It was completely aligned to our science curriculum and gave kids a hands on experience with insects!”
  • “What a wonderful program that not only bridges graduate students from Cornell with budding elementary scientist but also allows for some real life exposure to young adults within their community who are actively-just like them learning & growing knowledge. Great role models, organized & engaging lessons! We all learned a lot about our brains & how they function.”
  • “Tyler, Martha, and Lori were terrific guest teachers for my Kindergarten students. They creatively planned hands-on activities to illuminate abstract concepts in developmentally-appropriate ways for 5- and 6-year olds. My students were able to use real laboratory equipment to see the positive and negative effects of microbial activity, which would otherwise be invisible to them. Our GRASSHOPR experience was a tremendous asset to our science curriculum.”
  • “The GRASSHOPR program provided engaging lessons that were adequately matched to my students’ needs. My students still talk about the exciting lessons to this day!”
  • “Our GRASSHOPR students were knowledgable and able to convey that knowledge in an age appropriate manner to 7th graders. It was a pleasure to have Cornell grad students come in and present content from their specialties. My students learned something and so did I.”
  • “GRASSHOPPER brought science to life in my classroom. My students were inspired, motivated to learn and had the chance to engage with experts. I would highly recommend the program to all teachers!”
  • “Our GRASSHOPR volunteers were exceptionally knowledgeable, personable, motivated, and perhaps most importantly, tremendously engaging…and FUN!”
  • “My students really enjoyed the program. It was so interesting for them to hear about some of the current research going on in a topic they are studying in school. Also, it’s always exciting to have guest speakers/teachers visit the class.”
  • “I was amazed that two PhD students in computer science were willing to come to our middle school and teach students how to make a computer game! The materials were well-prepared, and the presentation was perfect for our 7th graders, accommodating a wide range of students. And it was wonderful for our girls to meet a female computer science student!”