Pasadena Experience. The history of the
Pasadena experience will soon be reported in a book to be
published by the American Association for the Advancement
of Science, title to be announced. A chapter entitled
"Doing Together What Neither Can Do Alone" will
be devoted to the CAPSI/Pasadena project. It was written
by CAPSI/Pasadena's four founders--Pasadena school
teacher Jennifer Yure, Caltech biologist Jim Bower,
Caltech physicist Jerry Pine, and the former Pasadena
assistant superintendent, Mike Klentschy. Although all
four have slightly different memories of the sequence of
events, the first ideas seem to have come from Bower, who
then recruited Pine because Pine had earlier been
involved in developing an elementary-school science
curriculum entitled Elementary Science Study (ESS). After
a few false starts, Yure was found, teaching in the
Pasadena system, and then Klentschy joined the team. It
was Yure who defined the role of pilot school
coordinator.
The informal growth of the program continued in the
one pilot school until the four leaders became
co-principal investigators on the first National Science
Foundation grant, received in 1990. The objective of the
grant was to spread the program to other schools in the
Pasadena system. The four principles constituted the
first leadership team (see Leadership Team below).
When the team was ready to introduce the modules into
the next four pilot schools, Yure became pilot-school
coordinator for them as well as the original pilot school
and drew on leader teachers from the first pilot school
to help with teacher training. A resource teacher from
the first school also helped, spending increasing amounts
of time in the new schools to support newly trained
teachers in their classrooms.
CAPSI/Pasadena staff have come to believe that any
reform effort should consider asking for guidance and
support from another district with a model program, as it
did from the Mesa, Arizona, Public Schools. Now CAPSI is
playing that role for 12 other California school
districts through The Center Project.
Pilot-School Coordinator. As a result of
CAPSI/Pasadena's early experience, the role of
pilot-school coordinator became more sharply defined: to
lead the program in a pilot school by coordinating the
professional development of the teachers, to acquire and
maintain the instructional modules, and to develop and
plan the program of the leadership team. In the
CAPSI/Pasadena program, teacher training is no longer
handled by the pilot-school coordinator but, rather,
primarily by lead teachers. Ongoing teacher mentoring is
then handled by resource teachers.
Lead Teachers. In the CAPSI/Pasadena program,
lead teachers lead module-specific trainings (usually for
a full day) for teachers who are preparing to teach a
module for the first time. Lead teachers are elementary
classroom teachers who have significant experience
teaching inquiry science, including the module that is
the object of the training. Often, lead teachers are
selected by resource teachers who have seen them teach
the module in the classroom. When a school district is
ready to expand its science education improvement
program, lead teachers will often be involved in the
professional development activities of teachers in
schools other than their own.
Resource Teachers. In the CAPSI/Pasadena
program, resource teachers play a key role: they spend
their time in elementary-school classrooms at one or two
schools per day supporting classroom teachers as they
teach science. Resource teacher responsibilities range
from advising teachers using kit-based science education
modules for the first time not to store plastic contains
of crayfish on the to giving complex feedback on new
approaches to classroom management and pedagogy.
Naturally, resource teachers spend more time with
teachers who are new to the program than with teachers
who have had significant experience with it.
Leadership Team. The CAPSI/Pasadena model
recommends the early creation of a leadership team
composed of the following members:
- The principal of the pilot school
- The school district superintendent or the
assistant superintendent for curriculum and
instruction
- The pilot-school coordinator
- A lead scientist-collaborator recruited by the
school district (or in some cases the scientist
who has recruited the school district to the
reform effort)
- A master teacher, for the Center, from Pasadena,
who is very experienced in hands-on,
inquiry-centered science teaching and who can
serve as a consultant to the pilot-school
coordinator in training teachers and in acting as
a resource teacher
The formation of the leadership team at the beginning
of the entire project is designed not only to assure
support for the reform efforts in the pilot school itself
but also to lay the foundation, through involvement and
commitment at the district level, for the difficult
district-wide expansion to follow.
Training for Pilot-School Coordinator and
Leadership Team. Because the pilot-school coordinator
and the rest of the leadership team play such important
roles, arrangements must be made to expose the members to
the variety of issues and challenges they will face. In
the new Center Project, this has taken the form of two
weeks of training each year for the pilot-school
coordinator, three days of which are also attended by the
Leadership Team. It is at this time that the model
project can be seen in motion in all of its many aspects.
