Program Helps Teachers to Plant Seeds of Lifelong Interest in Science

Five teachers huddle around a box of dirt.

Scattered nearby are kidney beans, empty egg cartons, fertilizer and packets labeled “sunflower.”

The teachers have come to Caltech to learn how to plant seeds.

Actually, to learn how to teach first-graders to plant seeds.

Caltech’s professors know that many of their best students got hooked on science in childhood by tinkering with electrical wires in their parents’ garages, or experimenting with how sun and water affect plant growth.

They also know that too many science classes today emphasize facts without giving children the practical experience to apply what they learn in textbooks.

So, in an innovative program that soon will enter the curriculum of the Pasadena Unified School District, two maverick Caltech science professors are teaching elementary schoolteachers how to teach hands-on science.

“People think you can’t do science until you master the knowledge and concepts, and that’s completely wrong,” said James Bower, a neurobiologist at Caltech who helped launch the experimental program four years ago at Pasadena’s Field School and is now supervising its implementation at six elementary schools. “Science is not a body of facts existing in a textbook. It is an ongoing process.”

Along with Caltech physicist Jerome Pine, Bower is convinced that America needs to demystify science and make it accessible to youngsters. The pair, who have made a second career of reforming science education, say teachers should encourage children’s natural curiosity and creativity with simple tools, such as clay, seeds and tadpoles found in the nearby arroyo.

Their program, called Project SEED, includes science lessons for grades kindergarten through sixth. It allows students to learn botany by planting seeds, biology by raising tadpoles and physics by building clay boats that won’t sink.

Educators say Project SEED is unusual because it emphasizes that science involves exploring, not just memorizing and spitting back information. After reading about magnets, for instance, kids actually will get to play with them and experiment with magnetic properties. Best of all, teachers say, Project SEED will provide the raw materials that make the hands-on theory a reality.

Currently, in most school districts, students might open a science textbook to learn how plants grow. But unless their teacher is willing to spend his own money to buy seeds and fertilizer, the class would never actually plant seeds or see how they thrive and die.

In Project SEED, schools will receive instructional materials, as well as starter kits with everything from pots to soil. Teachers call the kits a boon.

“Before, I’d have to go buy seeds and soil as part of our grocery bill, and my husband would look at me and say, ‘What’s that?’ ” said Patrice Kincey a first-grade teacher at Cleveland School.

Several other teachers in last week’s workshop said they have spent thousands of dollars buying everything from storybooks to crayons to hamsters for their classes.

Enthusiasts of Project SEED call it a holistic way of looking at science, one that allows teachers to expand the day’s lesson into other subjects. For instance, math could be incorporated by adding and dividing seeds needed per pot. History would be integrated if a teacher explained how ancient civilizations planted and harvested crops. Reading and writing come into play when students are asked to write poems about their favorite plants or to read from storybooks.

At Tuesday’s workshop, Laura Vallejo, a Project SEED pioneer who has been teaching the experimental program for four years at Field School, held up a children’s reading book called “The Littlest Seed,” by Eric Carle.

“From a book like this you can get a lot of new vocabulary words,” Vallejo explained. “You can make a list on the board and then ask kids to give a definition.”

Teachers, who took notes and asked numerous questions, said Tuesday’s workshop provided them with a rare and valuable opportunity to brainstorm with their peers and share ideas.

They exchanged stories about students conducting elaborate funerals for dead classroom polliwogs; of children who warded off plant vandals by sticking handwritten notes into the nearby soil asking that their experiments be spared; of the difficulties in teaching students who think that corn chips grow in campus vending machines.

“We’re so isolated in our classroom that we don’t have time to get out there and exchange ideas,” said Donald McBath, a teacher participating in the seminar.

Vallejo, who helped lead the all-day workshop, told the assembled teachers that she has watched in amazement as Project SEED turns class dullards into stars.

“Some kids who can’t learn from flash cards, who can’t learn with a flat piece of paper and a pencil, they just take off,” Vallejo said.

For the past four years, Caltech has monitored the pilot program at Field School much the way scientists monitor a scientific experiment, noting successes, recording observations, fine-tuning teaching methods as needed.

Bower is also designing computer programs that students can use to simulate experiments, and that teachers can use to test their students’ problem-solving abilities.

Pasadena is one of a handful of school districts nationwide that is testing new ways to improve science literacy. Project SEED works hand in hand with the National Science Resource Center. The Washington-based center was created by the Smithsonian Institution and the National Academy of Sciences.

In addition to receiving money and support from Caltech, Project SEED has the backing of local businesses, foundations and national firms. Donations to Project SEED total more than $125,000, not including the value of donated staff time and equipment, a Caltech spokesman said.

The Pasadena Unified School District last year voted to appropriate $83,120 to launch the program at six elementary schools. The program will be expanded to the district’s other elementary schools over the next several years. District officials hope to fund the expansion with grants from the National Science Foundation and the state.

Bower said Project SEED is designed to take advantage of young children’s natural curiosity.

“It’s disheartening to see kids who are in kindergarten and first grade more scientific than they will ever be in their lives because of the way the educational system is set up,” Bower says.

“We’re trying to find ways to allow kids to capture and maintain their creativity and inventiveness so that it actually becomes useful to society.”