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Camp Experience Pairs Environmental Action with Media Savvy

Graduate students who are studying to be teachers at the University of Rochester don't just learn how to design a curriculum—they literally get their feet wet perfecting it.

Through the Get Real! Science project, graduate students create lesson plans and then run a free summer camp for middle schoolers to practice their curriculum units and improve upon them. In the week-long camp adventure, a dozen 10 to 14-year-olds wear hip waders and use secchi disks to collect samples from the murky waters of an oft-closed, algae-filled public beach nearby. Two weeks before the kids' camp, the teachers themselves wade through the water and practice the same collection experiment techniques.

“Putting what we have into action and experiencing those practices with children cannot be underestimated,” says Tenny Jordan, a former participant. “This experience taught me about what it truly means to teach.”

The middle schoolers learn how to design and participate in field experiments, use scientific technology, and discover how science is important in everyday life. By week's end, they will share their knowledge through presentations to the community and make recommendations of what can be done to advocate change for one of Rochester 's biggest summer challenges—water quality at the beach.

The camp is part of the larger Get Real! Project, a teacher preparation program designed to engage students in real science. It is the brainchild of Assistant Professor, April Lynn Luehmann, at the Margaret Warner Graduate School of Education and Human Development at the University of Rochester .

In Luehmann's course called Integrating Science and Technology, graduate students enrich their science knowledge, try new teaching techniques, and get immediate feedback by working directly with middle-school youngsters.

This engagement of students in authentic science investigations is a powerful but incredibly challenging teaching strategy advocated by the latest calls for reform in science education,” says Luehmann.