I love what you are doing to bridge out of school and in school STEM experiences. I look forward to hearing more about what the daytime instructors are learning from the OST instructors and vice versa. As the adults collaborate on doing the projects that they'll then implement, they are also gaining some empathy for what students might experience. We have been bringing OST instructors together across programs to engage in Lesson Study processes for developing and iterating on activity design and facilitation. The ability to observe one another in facilitation roles has been a great learning opportunity for everyone. I'm guessing that the co-instruction is leading to some similar opportunities to learn from observation.

Hi Lara! One of the predecessors of this project was an initiative called FUSE (Frontiers in Urban Science Education), which also explored connections between afterschool and school-day educators in multiple cities (Boston, NYC, Providence).  A final report about the initiative (see here) helped summarize the different key learnings or insights that school-day teachers gleaned from afterschool educators and vice versa.  "Participating in FUSE catalyzes change in educators – classroom teachers often adapt their pedagogy to learner centered approaches; deepen their excitement for teaching; and assume leadership roles. Afterschool educators also grow in confidence, expertise and leadership to facilitate STEM activities from standards and content taught during the school day."  This exchange is the kind of mutual growth you might expect: to some extent, school-day teachers leaned more into youth development practices, and afterschool educators became more confident with STEM content facilitation. 

This wasn't as much of a focus of the Design2Learn evaluation, though we did find some evidence of changes in educator practice.  I'll ask my colleague Cheri (who was the lead researcher on the project) to chime in if I am missing anything here?

Hi Lara- thanks for your comments!  Through our implementation research, we found that the D2L educators almost universally agreed that the collaboration improved the quality of the programming. The greatest challenge they faced in implementing the model was not related to collaboration- rather it was getting support from the host school administrators, finding time to meet, and getting students to attend consistently. As is common with middle school students, as they got older, they gained more independence and were less likely to participate in afterschool programs. Having dedicated time set aside each week, where educators were compensated for their time, was key to successful collaboration. 

Hi Paige! I am going to chime in here as part of Fran's team on this project. I ran the professional development at the NY Hall of Science for these collaborative teaching teams. To kick off every school year, we would run a weeklong intensive training for the teams during the summer. Often, these trainings would be the first time they officially met. In those sessions, we made sure to include ice breakers, team building activities, and design challenges that required a collaborative effort. Throughout the week, they would stay in their teams to learn about (and practice) co-planning and co-teaching. Since teams generally included a formal middle school teacher with two informal community-based educators, we tried to level the playing field by modeling and including an orientation to pedagogy (inquiry), science standards, content knowledge (through participation in activities), and facilitation skills for youth in afterschool. There were also plenty of opportunities for teams to share their own personal and professional experiences when we would reflect on practice (both as individuals as well as a team). We wanted everyone to walk away realizing that each member from their team brought in something valuable and unique to make their afterschool program successful. 

Hi Amy! Thanks for you comments and questions. We have a great team presenting that can provide some key insights to your questions. Cheri was our lead researcher who can get into the nooks and crannies of what we were looking for. And Antoineta and Franco were community educators who worked closely with school day teachers during this project and they can speak to how it influenced school day teaching at their sites! 

Grand Afternoon Amy! Thank you for the feedback! As a STEM educator within the CBO when we did this program, bringing in the school-day Science teacher was something we knew we wanted to do. As a CBO in a school that had two other after school programs happening alongside ours, we wanted to highlight what differentiated us from the two and it was that partnership, that bridge, from the school day Science lesson to the after school STEM club. What we did as OST educators was meet with the Science teacher to discuss what themes/topics were going to be discussed during that week/month. We then took the information, let's say she was discussing Geology that month, we would then meet and discuss which lessons we had on-hand that would to only fit into this topic but also give the hands-on approach the students may not be able to get in class. In a way, we made the after school STEM club a FUN continuation of what they were learning during the day. The outcome that we were looking for when bringing on the Science teacher was to strengthen the relationship we had with the school and to also let the entire school community know that this type of partnership would be beneficial to our youth; when young people see their after school program invested in what happens or how they learn during the school day, it leads to empowerment and those young people knowing that they matter to us. One of the positive outcomes to this was another science teacher started partnering with us to get assistance on how to engage her students during the school day. 

Hi Amy,

Thanks so much for your question about outcomes. We looked at a wide variety of educator and student outcomes. Through self-report surveys, we asked educators how often they collaborated and co-taught with their partners. We also asked questions about their relationship, such as the extent to which they agreed/disagreed with the following statements: 

• I am open to my teaching partners’ ideas about activities.
• I am open to receiving feedback about activities from my teacher partners.
• I respect my teaching partners.
• I feel respected by my teaching partners.
• Collaborating with my teaching partners has enhanced my ability to lead successful science activities in after school.
• Collaborating with my teaching partners has improved the quality of after school science activities offered in this program.

We also asked how often they talked to their partner about:

• Alignment between school day and after school curriculum
• Debriefing successes and challenges from previous lessons
• Feedback for your teaching partners
• Youth development or behavior issues
• Ideas for upcoming lessons
• Understanding the science content behind an activity
• How to make lessons engaging for youth 
• How to make lessons relevant to participants’ lives

The surveys also asked how participation in D2L changed teachers' and community educators' practices - and results were positive! Through interviews, we asked teachers and community educators to describe how they worked  together to align curriculum and plan activities. 

In terms of student outcomes, we asked them to self report (in surveys) on how often they experienced curricular bridging (e.g., We learned about something we were doing in science class in school; The afterschool activity leaders in this program talked about things we were learning in school; My science class teacher talked about things we did in this afterschool program.)  Through pre/post surveys, we looked at outcomes not specifically related to collaboration such as interest and engagement in science, and science identity. Thanks again for your interest in this work!

 

Hello Cheri,

Thank you for sharing the specific ways you measured project outcomes. I appreciated the intentional focus on evaluating the collaboration between the informal educators and the teachers. I am curious to learn more about the results from your interviews and surveys. Did you find any patterns in your data to identify elements that led to successful collaborations? what were some of the challenges that you encountered as you brought these teams together? 

Very interesting work, thank you for sharing! 

Hi Nidaa! I'll let Cheri chime in with findings from the evaluation, but I can start with sharing some perspective on the programmatic side.  Some of the challenges that educators faced were around scheduling.  Since afterschool and the school-day operate on different schedules and bureaucracies, finding shared common time to meet and plan was a challenge.  And some of the features of the project/grant also proved to be a challenge.  For example, we had relatively high rates of youth turnover in the program, which is common in afterschool.  Many educator teams found themselves meeting and strategizing over recruitment and enrollment, not necessarily planning facilitation.  Franco and Antoineta (who are co-presenters in the Showcase and amazing educators featured in the video), what am I missing from the programs side? What set your collaborations up for success? What was challenging?

Hi Nidaa- Our research findings align with Emma's perspective. One of the biggest challenges was finding time to collaborate. Having regularly scheduled (e.g., weekly) dedicated time set aside to meet, where educators are paid for their time, was key to success. Student attendance was also an issue, as Emma mentioned. As middle school students get older, they gained more independence and are less likely to participate in afterschool programs. In terms of additional supports needed to be successful, D2L educators most frequently requested materials to implement the activities, curricular resources such as lesson plans, and training on how to increase student interest.

Hi Scott. Thanks for calling out the strengths that educators from both informal and formal can bring to a learning environment. On this project, community educators where employees of various community-based organizations that ran afterschool programming within public middle school settings. Some had deep interest in STEM already and others were new to teaching the content area. Among this group of fantastic educators there was a diversity of gender, racial identity and languages spoken that often reflected the youth  they worked with in the program. Franco and Antoineta who are co-presenters and  featured in the video can speak more about their experiences! 

Hi Scott, I am one of the community educators. I represent Community counseling and Mediation, which is a non profit organization located in Brooklyn. We were provided with the great opportunity to collaborate with Expanded schools and the New York Hall of science to bring Design2Learn into our classroom. I personally love to create and see the look on my students when they are proud of something they either built or have personally discover. It was a tough battle the first few activities but once the students realize that this wasn't just any ordinary STEM class, they began to lose themselves in the fun. Such a great and fun experience for teachers and students. 

Thank you, Fran and Franco. This is all very interesting. Great that you explored collaborations with both STEM- focused and non-STEM-focused community organizations. I look forward to hearing more about your project in the future.

Thank you so much Ann! We are so happy to hear that you already have the wheels turning on incorporating these ideas into your space! The beauty of co-teaching and collaboration is that there is no one-size-fits-all approach and it can be tweaked to accommodate the team.

Yes, Meagan, we miss is too! So much so we try to bring that "feeling" of the family style/NYSCI basement classroom into every space we lead in the virtual world. As one of the STEM educators in the video, I can attest to how engaging and fun these spaces were and the enthusiasm from Jasmine, co-presenter and director of Science Coaching at NYSCI, made those spaces that much more exciting. 

Thank you for this feedback Marijke and appreciate that the importance of building trust as a foundation to build on resonated with you! We do believe that trust and highlighting the importance of collaboration is key to building a strong and sustainable environment. 

Hi Jemelle! Thanks for writing. We focused on middle school science (6, 7, 8th grade) and followed the NYC Scope & Sequence standards. Interestingly, the standards kept evolving during the years that we ran Design2Learn so we had to adjust accordingly. The latest version of our lessons are based off of the 2018 edition of the standards, so there is a big NGSS influence in the alignment of the lessons. This includes a three dimensional learning approach that blends Science & Engineering Practices + Disciplinary Core Ideas + Cross Cutting Concepts to work towards a Performance Expectation. Here is a link for reference:

https://www.weteachnyc.org/media2016/filer_publ...