Institute for Systems Biology

Among ISB’s ever-growing set of high school problem-based-learning modules, are several that provide exemplary supplementary units for climate science issues and standards. ISB hosts and regularly updates a teacher-friendly website for all the OER materials we use in the ClimeTime workshops; please view at https://see.isbscience.org/. New resources were added during the past school year with remote-learning and hybrid-learning strategies and formats.

ISB weaves through each workshop series the 3-Dimensions of student science learning:

• DCIs – What students learn
• SEPs – What students do
• CCCs – What students think

The professional learning experiences follow our learning arc for educators — this develops teachers’ practice in a way that results in their students building their own STEM identity and increasing aspiration for STEM occupations.

1. Personal learning by each teacher through experiencing contemporary important STEM content, careers, and approaches.
2. Professional learning via teachers collaborating to prepare for instruction using best practices. Student voice strategies (learning progress heat maps, clicker surveys, reflection boards, and more) are modeled for and practiced by teachers.
3. Action for student learning happens through teachers engaging their students in STEM learning experiences that build students’ aspiration for STEM career pathways, and by teachers analyzing evidence of learning across this network of educators.

Teacher Professional Learning

“Teachers Inspiring Science Students — CCCs in action to learn climate science: a ClimeTime project by ISB with ESD + district partners” 

Features:

• • We use a Systems Approach, working with teams of teacher colleagues towards equitably supporting each student.
  • We facilitate STEM Professionals to engage with teachers around climate science issues, current research, and personal stories of life/school pathways in STEM fields.
  • We model the use of a range of exemplary OER resources including ISB developed modules that provide authentic science investigations that engage students and bridge the distance between the professional lab and the classroom.
  • We make the Crosscutting Concepts come to life, emphasizing their importance for each and every student, every grade throughout K-12 and exploring strategies for authentically integrating them into the classroom.
  • We support teachers to observe student learning including using practical measures as they implement.

Results from 2020-2021 in partnership with ESDs:

ISB’s education team has a 20+ year track record of forming and nurturing science education partnerships in WA, through direct work on science reform projects in the greater Puget Sound region and statewide through Washington State LASER.At the time of the SARs-CoV-2 outbreak, ISB partnered with PSESD-121’s ClimeTime project to offer, urgently, a set of “Systems Are Everywhere!” workshops for teachers to see online science instruction modeled, and to receive coaching in order to implement the lessons in their own classrooms. In total 569 educators from 110 districts across all 9 ESDs participated in ISBs 18 ClimeTime workshops, and many of these teachers that sought out and participated were not those traditionally included in science professional development for in-depth support linking WSSLS and climate science. Please see the ClimeTime impacts report from school year 2020-21 at https://tinyurl.com/ISBFY2021.