One of my classroom rules is to “Leave a place better than you found it.” That means if you see trash on the ground, pick it up. It also means math class should be more productive, because you are present. My first week at Bayer CropScience, I immediately began asking myself, “How can I leave this place better than I found it.” It is a challenging question to ask, because Bayer is an amazing place. However, it is an important question since this is Bayer’s first year participating in the program, and I want them to have a positive experience and be eager to participate next year. Lindsey and I decided to work on two specific outcomes for Bayer: Making Science Make Sense (MSMS) and the Bee Care Center field trip program.
Bayer is an obvious stakeholder in science education, because they want to hire well-qualified scientists and to market to scientifically literature consumers. MSMS is a Bayer initiative to ignite a passion for science and promote scientific literacy among students (AKA future scientists and consumers). Through the MSMS program, Bayer CropScience sends employee volunteers into local classrooms to share about their work and do experiments with students. This program impacts 3,000 students annually. However, at the present time, most of the material is related to other aspects of Bayer, and not CropScience. They have engaging experiments, but when employees explain their career, and the students participate in the experiments, there is a disconnect. Bayer CropScience would like for us as Kenan Fellows to develop lessons that are connected with Agricultural Science. We have identified big ideas in Ag Science, such as symbiosis, micro-organisms, and genetics to base the program. We will create a pre/post “test” so the program will have data to validate its impact. (As teachers, we love data, right?) After writing all the experiments into a user-friendly document, we will conduct a training session in December for employees to walk through the experiments to prepare them for working with students.
Our second Kenan goal at Bayer is to further development the field trip program. Upon our initial visit to the Bee Care Center, the staff shared with us that many groups, including students, come to the Bee Care Center and Greenhouse 5 for tours. After participating in one of tours, Lindsey and I agreed the Bee Care Center is a fascinating place. It has only been open one year, so we would like to help them develop a stronger field trip program. It would be wonderful for more students to come see the real-world connections to their science classes at Bayer’s site. We would like to ensure student engagement. Let’s face it: There is always a student or two counting ceiling tiles, while the tour guide shares about the role of the queen, worker bees, and drones in the hive. I thought of how when I attend the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum in Nashville, they had cards you had to “check off” as you visited various sections of the museum. A scavenger hunt (or similar tool) would help engage students by establishing concrete goals for the tour. Also, we would like to structure the MSMS into the total field trip program, so students actually complete a couple of experiments during their visit. We brainstormed ways to turn the field trip into a Citizen Science activity, in which students proactively promote bee care after they leave Bayer. (This might look similar to Bayer’s “Adopt a Bee” program in which you plant flowers that will attract pollinators.) Ideally, we would like to have Lindsey’s class visit while I am at the Bee Care Center, so they can be our Guinea pigs for our field trip modifications. We need to work through the logistics of our ideas, such as identifying who will run the field trip activities for large groups. We will have to see how it works out, but we are excited about the options nonetheless.
At this point, it seems overwhelming to accomplish all of these goals. I am sure not everything will happen as we anticipate. However, Bayer has given us permission to dream big and scale back if necessary. I am also thankful I will be doing part of my internship in September and December, so I can have more time to refine these programs. If we even accomplish fifty percent of these goals, I am convinced we will leave Bayer CropScience “better than we found it.”
Today’s Take away: Leave a place
better than you found it.