November 17, 1999
Contact: Ranjit Arab, University Relations, (785) 864-8855.
LAWRENCE -- Believe it or not, Wyandotte High School math teacher Delores Mies said her students look forward to class on Wednesdays. That's the day of the week that University of Kansas graduate student Lonnie Sauter teaches her algebra and advanced math classes.
"The kids look forward to him coming in because they know they're going to do something different that is still related to the lesson plan," Mies said of Sauter's creative teaching techniques, which include using building blocks to help high-school freshmen understand algebra equations.
Sauter, St. Joseph, Mo., graduate student in mathematics, is one of six KU graduate students currently participating in a program that transports them to the Kansas City, Kan., high school to teach math and science once a week. The teaching fellowships began in the last week of September.
The program was made available through a three-year $1.1 million grant awarded to KU by the National Science Foundation for its Teaching Fellows Program. KU is one of just 31 universities across the nation to receive such a grant.
Janet Robinson, assistant professor of chemistry and organizer of the KU fellows teaching program, said the program treats the fellows much like graduate teaching assistants by giving them one-year stipends and tuition support.
She said the inner-city school was chosen for the program in the hopes of helping it turn around its history of low student achievement in math and science. However, she said the program is not just a benefit to the high-school students. It gives the graduate students a chance to learn more teaching skills as they meet challenges, and it also benefits teachers who may not have the time, access to materials or specific expertise to develop student projects, she said.
Keeping up-to-date is one benefit not lost on Mies.
"I'll be the first to admit that I haven't been in a college class in 14 years, so I often have to rely on just the textbooks," she said. "These KU students help us with all of the things we don't have time for or the expertise to do."
Still, Robinson said it would take some time before the success of the program could be measured.
"We are hoping that over a three-year period, with 26 graduate students and 24 undergraduate students, we will have had a significant impact on both the math and science teachers and students," Robinson said. "But we know that nothing like this will happen overnight."
Robinson said the program would expand to include eight undergraduate teaching fellows for the upcoming spring semester. Next school year, the program will include 10 graduate and eight undergraduate fellows.
Robinson said several other high schools and middle schools in the Kansas City, Kan., district have expressed a need for help with teaching math and sciences. To that end, Robinson said, the program will send fellows to additional schools next year.
"These students really don't have mentors who would bring them into science or technology careers, and that's one function we hope the graduate students will provide," she said.
Sauter, meanwhile, said he had taught high school in rural Missouri for two years prior to becoming involved in this program. Nonetheless, teaching at the Kansas City, Kan., school was quite a shock to him. The greatest obstacle he faced in teaching at the inner-city school was fighting the apathy, he said.
"For the most part, they're good kids, but it would be nice if the parents were more involved in the school," Sauter said. Cory Ruedebusch, Wichita graduate student in biology and one of the teaching fellows, also had teaching experience prior to becoming involved in the fellowship program.
However, she said teaching at Wyandotte has been extremely challenging because she had a large role in developing the class curriculum, and because she worked with a chemistry teacher who had been asked to step outside his area of expertise and teach the biology class.
Ruedebusch said the program made her realize how difficult it can be to keep a classroom of high school kids interested in science. To keep them alert and interested, she said, she developed several hands-on projects, such as bringing animals and insects into the classroom. This way, she said, she was able to explain science in a very practical way.
"I think they (the students) are getting a better sense of what science is and what scientists do," Ruedebusch said. "To me, success will be measured with the individual. If you see someone has a spark in their eye because of something they learned in the classroom, then I'd say it was a success."