(5c) K-12 Outreach: My Experience In High School Classrooms with the NSF GK-12 Program

As a graduate student I was fortunate to be a part of the National Science Foundation Graduate Teaching Fellows in K-12 Education (GK-12). The GK-12 program pairs graduate students with educational faculty, mentors, and K-12 teachers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics to integrate interactive technologies into STEM education.

As a GK-12 fellow, I worked with three high school chemistry teachers to develop a variety of lessons based on teacher need.  One main focus of the lessons was creating computer-based activities and visualization materials that would supplement student lessons. Because there were fewer constraints on my activities in the high school classroom I had the opportunity to try innovative approaches to teaching, such as practicing chemical nomenclature through a web-based game and learning about reaction stoichiometry through an interactive computer-based lesson.

The other focus of the lessons was introducing students to Chemistry and Engineering in the real world.  These lessons usually took the form of seminars followed by laboratory activities.  Some of our successful seminars were on food sciences, fireworks, and making money.  Students enjoyed hearing something that was not part of their standard textbook, and often didn’t realize they were learning something new or supplementing something they had already learned.