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Barrington Students Bring Lesson to Life in NASA, STLCC Partnership
Empty two-liter bottles, dirt, snails and goldfish have added a new level of excitement to Paris Bouchard’s fifth grade science class at Barrington Elementary. The materials are just a few of the items students recently used as part of an education outreach initiative of the Hazelwood School District and St. Louis Community College (STLCC) Center for Plant and Life Sciences.
With the materials listed above, Bouchard’s class built a terrarium as part of its lesson on ecosystems. The 90-minute classroom sessions are one of the three-part program that, according to Bouchard, builds upon and expands the District’s current science curriculum.
For Bouchard’s fifth graders, the terrariums were used to study how animals and plants coexist.
“The students learned how plants give off oxygen and how the organisms used that oxygen to breathe,” explained Angela Taylor, education outreach specialist with STLCC’s Center for Plant and Life Sciences. “They also learned about other important concepts such as condensation and evaporation, which tie back into the District’s curriculum for fifth graders.”
Bouchard coordinated the Barrington project with Taylor after the two met at a PTA meeting. “She was so accommodating and supportive of getting the program into our school,” Bouchard said.
For the second phase of the project, the STLCC Career Coach was brought to the school where classes took part in laboratory exercises and experiments. The Career Coach is a trailer that doubles as a mobile laboratory where students can expand upon the classroom portion of the project.
Phase three of the program was a trip to the Center for Plant and Life Sciences at the Bio Research and Development Growth Park in Creve Coeur. There, the Barrington fifth graders took their in-class and Career Coach lessons a step further, and extracted DNA from wheat germ as well as other scientific activities.
Like scientists, the students approached the project in a professional manner and it showed in their work on the experiments, Taylor remarked. “When they came to our site, no one even knew they were there,” she recalled. “They went to the labs, put on their lab coats and got right to work.”
Taylor, Bouchard, and the parents took special note of the students’ demeanors and behavior.
“The kids were really serious, well-behaved and even said they felt like scientists,” said Bouchard. “The parents have even told me their kids were talking about the field trip and how it really inspired them.”
Prior to the Barrington class, only ‘gifted’ students were selected to participate in the program, according to Taylor.
“I wanted to show that this program would benefit all students, in addition to our gifted students,” she said. Bouchard and Taylor are working on expanding the partnership to other schools within the Hazelwood School District.
Taylor says programs like this are critical to increasing interest and aptitude in science. This program, which is also co-sponsored by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), is in the third and possibly, final year. However, Taylor says even without the NASA funding, she plans to continue the in-class and Career Coach visits.
Taylor, who is also a parent of a fifth grader in the Hazelwood School District, said programs like this are crucial to the future of science and technology.
“We only know so many of the genes within the chromosomes,” Taylor said. “It’s the next generation’s job to figure out the rest. The objective of this program is to get students and the community engaged about science and the possibilities. We need to make sure the generations to come are equipped to make these discoveries.”
Bouchard echoed Taylor’s sentiments.
“It’s powerful for kids to think, ‘We are the next explorers,’” he said. “As an educator, it makes it easier in the classroom when students have made that connection between what’s taught in school and the real world around them. It motivates the students and helps them connect the dots. Finding their own questions and answering them. That’s what science is about.”
