With Schools Closed, Science Teachers and Students Look to the Outdoors

Before school closure, Dr. Susan Pike’s classrooms were loud, and she prided herself on it.

Students in her high school science classes at the private school St. Thomas Aquinas High School, in Dover, would do calculations together on the white board, bounce between group experiments, and crowd over microscopes to inspect pond scum.

“One of the favorites is the pond water [lessons], where we’re looking at different species and then doing things with food webs, and they’re all looking at microscopes and finding these disgusting worms,” she says. “And people are talking to each other and sharing their ideas.”

Sharing ideas in a lab is central to science education. So is hands-on learning. But with school closures from the coronavirus pandemic, science teachers are now trying to figure out what of this can be translated during remote learning. Pike says some of the magic in her classroom is impossible to recreate online.

“We’re all getting tired of looking at a screen of faces, oftentimes with just the name, and it’s just like talking into the void,” she says.

Read the rest of this story at NHPR’s website.