Connecting chemistry to the real world
Retired chemist and ex-pat Robert Thomas volunteers as part of a programme that places retired STEM professionals in classrooms across the Washington, DC area – lending their expertise to teachers and helping students understand how their lessons relate to the real world.
AUTHOR: Robert Thomas, CSci, CChem, FRSC, Team Leader, AAAS/STEM Volunteer Programme, Montgomery County, MD
I am a retired analytical chemist, having worked in the field of atomic and mass spectrometry for over 40 years. Fifteen years ago I took early retirement from the analytical instrumentation company that had been a part of my life for 25 years and found a second career as a freelance science writer. If you’ve read any of my 90+ publications or four textbooks, you know that my main reason for writing is not only because I have a passion for the field of the analytical sciences, but I also have an interest in passing on the knowledge I’ve acquired over this time.
I believe we all have a duty to use our expertise to improve the world in any way we can. Recent politically-motivated events in the US have warned us that science is losing its rightful status as a source of truth, so we cannot keep that knowledge to ourselves. The public debates on topics such as evolution, climate change, and vaccines, are living proof that alternative facts are now a part of our everyday lives.
AAAS STEM Volunteer Programme
That is why, 10 years ago, I decided to do something about it. I was looking for a way that I could not only participate in the education of my two daughters, but also contribute to the scientific literacy of the general public at large. I thought about teaching, but in the US the system does not encourage retired/experienced scientists to go into teaching – the certification process is time consuming, cumbersome, and not inexpensive for someone who is approaching the twilight of their career.
I came across a programme that was affiliated with the American Association for the Advancement of Science called the AAAS STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths) volunteer programme, which placed retired STEM professionals in elementary, middle and high schools in the Washington, DC area with the objective of applying their experience to help teachers make science more interesting for students, using creative and innovative methods. Each volunteer was asked to commit to an entire school year, dedicating a few hours of their time every week.
Classroom activities
I started volunteering in 2008, not really sure where it would take me. Today, I support three chemistry teachers – Mary Baker, Cathy Cross, and Michael Miehl – at Sherwood High School in Sandy Spring, MD, where I volunteer one day a week, talking about the real-world applications of chemistry as related to the curriculum.
Over the years we’ve expanded the programme to also discuss events in the newspaper, on the internet or on TV which have a chemistry “flavour”, such as the CSI crime series, drug testing, fracking for natural gas, toxic effects of lead in drinking water, the Fukushima nuclear disaster, conflict minerals in the Congo, and many, many more interesting and meaningful topics. We have discussion periods during many of the classes to get the students’ feedback and also to see if they’ve been paying attention (their smartphone headphones are often a give-away!).
We have also organized field trips to the local water authority lab where they saw science being applied to something they could relate to – clean drinking water. We have also organized trips to the Montgomery County Crime Lab to learn all about drug testing; to the National Institute of Science and Technology (NIST) Center for Neutron Research, which provides neutron measurement capabilities to the U.S. research community; and to the USA Science and Engineering Festival, which is held every other year in Washington, DC.
I also acquired an atomic absorption instrument – donated from a local lab that was closing down, so we are planning to carry out some basic elemental testing of the school’s drinking water supply. There is no question it has definitely put a "spark" into the chemistry classes. The teachers see the benefits and the students have realized that not only is chemistry a part of everyday life, but it’s also so much fun to learn!
Improving standards
Our programme has been in existence since 2004, when six concerned STEM professionals got together to respond to an editorial in Science magazine about the lack of scientific knowledge amongst the general public. They decided to do something about it and approached the superintendent of their local school district. They suggested a pilot programme of volunteering their time to support STEM teachers who were interested in bringing the real world of STEM into the classroom.
Fourteen years later the programme has almost 250 retired and working STEM professionals bringing the real world of science and engineering to over 20,000 students every week of the school year in the Washington, DC and 10 surrounding counties in Maryland and Virginia. I now lead the volunteer programme in Montgomery and Howard Counties, MD, where we have over 100 volunteers supporting about 140 teachers in 85 different elementary, middle and high schools.
If there is one common reason why we do this, it's because we all care passionately about elevating the level and quality of STEM education in the US. We are not only teaching the students about the fundamentals of chemistry, but we are also guiding them how to think critically by being concerned citizens of the world around them, and to question many of the "alternative facts" and untruths that are out there in the public domain.
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