When I asked elementary teachers what would be the best way to teach science, the teachers responded with a no-nonsense approach. “Give us easy science activities that help our students build critical thinking skills… to use the scientific method… and are so engaging that kids want to learn more on their own.”The days of trying to squeeze science in at the last minute are over. We need to stop squeezing and start integrating science with other areas of the curriculum.

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Here are a few articles that illustrate the need for better teaching of real science in today’s classrooms…
Bad News for Elementary Teachers

Stop Squeezing My Science

You Might Be Teaching the Wrong Thing

A Wake-up Call to Parents

By 10:30 AM on Friday, March 10th, the place was out of control. Roughly 600 early childhood teachers who attended my featured session - How to Keep Your Children Excited about Science - were smacking each other with giant 8 foot long balloons and learning about carbon dioxide by dropping Mentos candy into 2-liter bottles of diet Coke. I think we broke the previous 16 foot record for erupting soda - the soda shot up and almost touched the 20 foot ceiling. Okay, why is doing this crazy stuff any better than making the 600 teachers sit through a PowerPoint presentation about teaching science?

Because great science teachers understand the need to make science come alive. It’s not about getting “kids” excited about science. … kids love science. It’s the teachers who have a problem with science because most of us had a science teacher in school that was as exciting and dynamic as a brick wall. Let’s be honest, these presentations are really about getting the TEACHER motivated to teach science and to integrate more science education into their classrooms. It’s about getting great early childhood educators excited about teaching something that can make a difference in the life of a child… and make the world a better place to live… and increase the number of times you laugh each day.

Gretchen Berhorst and her team from the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education pulled off another amazing conference - great training sessions, great resources and just the right mix of fun to motivate and inspire some of Missouri’s best early childhood educators.

Thomas Friedman, author of The World is Flat, recently interviewed Craig Barrett, the chief executive of Intel, which has invested millions of dollars in trying to improve the way science is taught in U.S. schools. In today’s flat world, Mr. Barrett said, Intel can be a totally successful company without ever hiring another American. That is not its desire or intention, he said, but the fact is that it can now hire the best brain
talent “wherever it resides.”

If you look at where Intel is making its new engineering investments today, he said, it is in China, India, Russia, Poland and, to a lesser
extent, Malaysia and Israel. While cutting-edge talent is still being grown in America, he added, it’s not enough for Intel’s needs, and not enough is
being done in U.S. public schools - not just to leave no child behind, but to make sure that the best students and teachers are nurtured and rewarded.

What’s the solution? Stop squeezing science of out of the elementary curriculum! Our young children today will never become the scientists of tomorrow if we continue to put science on the pack burner until we have time to teach it in class. Elementary teachers will tell you that unless they personally make a concentrated effort to integrate the teaching of science into the other disciplines, there’s just little time left at the end of the day to teach science. Hey, if you’re a parent reading this and your child is doing tons of science in class, consider yourself one of the lucky ones. As a science education consultant, I can assure you that science is slowly becoming an “extra-curricular” activity in elementary schools across the country. Many teachers are afraid to teach science because their training in science was nothing more than an outdated science methods class in college. And it’s tough to get a kid excited about science with a worksheet. It’s kind of like trying to teach a kid to play the piano by looking at pictures of pianos, reading stories about pianos and doing crossword puzzles about pianos. It just doesn’t work.

Let the words of Craig Barrett be a wake-up call to Superintendents and school district leaders across the country when it comes to training elementary teachers to get kids excited about learning science. Without this all important introduction to science in the elementary years, our children will be less than motivated to want to learn science in their middle and high school years.

So, the next time you drop the kids off at school, make a quick trip to the Principals office to learn more about his or her plan to integrate more science into the core the curriculum. What professional development training are the teachers receiving to become better science teachers? Is someone really looking out for the future of your children? Serious? You bet. Are you willing to risk your child’s future on the poor decisions of a few people today?