Our Wildwood, Volume 47

FEATURE See Yourself in Science

The question Boucher posed was: How can fifth graders learn about a diverse group of scientists, and as leaders of the school, use tech and design to begin breaking down those stereotypes for our community? “It would be sad if, as an elementary school student, the only kind of science you thought you could do was to be a chemist, right?” Boucher said. “Not that we left out chemists, but there’s a huge variety of sciences. My job as an elementary school science teacher is to help kids fall in love with science, to see themselves and identify themselves in many ways in science, but also see the possibilities for what’s out there.” The #ScientistsWhoSelfie campaign offers a glimpse of these possibilities, with scientists of all ages, races and genders around the world posting images of themselves at work: A marine biologist is photobombed by another scuba diving colleague in his lab, the ocean. A young female scientist holds up the subject of her studies, a turtle, and matches his big, open-mouthed “smile.” The resulting Wildwood version is a collection of “tweets” prepared in Google Slides, where students imagined what scientists from the famous, like Stephen Hawking and Albert Einstein, to the lesser-known, like Ada Lovelace and George Washington Carver, might post about their work. The tweets are on display outside the science classroom, where K-5 students can view them, and are posted online. A tweet from June Almeida @virusdetective shows a woman with a microscope and says: “Hard day

finding out the mystery behind the first coronavirus #ScientistsWhoSelfie #virusworld #Scottishforlife.” A tweet from Mae Jamison says: “Wow! 110 orbits down, 16 more to go! Another great day on Endeavor!” The number of “likes” (1992) clues the reader into the year she made history by becoming the first African American woman in space. A QR code on each tweet provides access to a brief summary about the scientist’s life and work. “It’s really cool to walk by and see all the scientists and different tweets from my classmates,” said Magnus W. ‘29. “You get to think about science from a different perspective other than your own.” Based Learning guidelines to develop the science and tech project and enlisted the help of Wildwood’s technology education coaches. Wildwood’s version of #ScientistsWhoSelfie also reflects the school’s diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEIB) priorities, which have been at the core of its progressive education model since its founding and were strengthened most recently with a DEIB action plan created in 2019. The students’ work began on Google Jamboard, where they could add post-it notes to the virtual bulletin board with their responses to questions about generalizations people might have about scientists, from what they wear and what tools they use to what they look like and how old they are. Next, Boucher introduced them to the study that has been repeated since the 1950s asking kids to draw a scientist. Then she shared tweets from #ScientistsWhoSelfie and photos from a Nature celebration of scientists at work, which include many surprising images, such as an ecologist and meteorologist descending a rock face with ropes—and a boat!—to study the geological record in a sinkhole in Australia. With a list of scientists in hand, students set to work collaboratively, researching biographical and background info, as well as awards and accomplishments, and assembling brief facts about the scientist’s work. For some of the less-familiar scientists, source material is hard to come by. Boucher explained how many scientists have not been part of the narrative by using the example of Katherine Johnson, an African American mathematician who worked for NASA on the first manned spaceflights. The 2016 movie Hidden Figures told her DISCOVERING NEW STORIES Boucher used the University of Pennsylvania’s Project

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