Lunchtime Science: Reaching Underachieving Girls

By Rhonda Barton

SEATTLE, Washington—Imagine your teenaged friend Anita is going to have a baby, but thinks nothing of drinking alcoholic beverages. What advice would you give her about ensuring a healthy pregnancy? That dilemma formed the guiding question for an innovative lunchtime science program at Garfield High, an inner-city school in Seattle.

Jessica Thompson, a graduate student and instructor at the University of Washington, teamed up with biology teacher Rebecca Shope to design a curriculum targeting girls who were earning D's and F's in science. The classes—held every day for two weeks during a one-hour lunch period—also served as the basis for research into engaging underachieving girls in scientific discourse.

In designing the program, Thompson interviewed 20 young women who were failing science. She asked them about their experiences in and out of school and about their science classes. Rather than talking about how they engaged in a particular class or topic, Thompson found that the girls focused on how those activities related to their identities. "I categorized those [responses] as who I am, who I'm becoming, and the important relationships in my life," says Thompson.

Using those themes as a starting point for the curriculum, Thompson and Shope suggested three topics they believed were relevant to the students' lives: sports and your body; the ecology of your neighborhood; and prenatal health. The girls were asked to pick the topic they wanted to study and they overwhelmingly chose the last one.

"We started with this amazing idea of developing someone the kids could relate to—Anita, a girl who could have been a friend. And, she was pregnant and was drinking," Shope explains. "The kids had to come up with what they were going to say to her, and that got them immediately interested and hooked in."

The teens heard from guest speakers and experimented with fish eggs, observing what even mild alcohol levels can do to the embryos inside the transparent eggs. Thompson notes that the girls decided what kind of data they wanted to collect: heartbeat rates, the color of eggs, and the color and size of embryos. "They were relating a lot of things we talked about—like low birth rate—to what they were seeing. They looked across data to come up with patterns and then presented their findings, tying them to what advice they'd give to Anita," says Shope.

To further her research, Thompson videotaped the sessions and interviewed both individuals and groups of students after the program ended. "I was interested in how they described the experience and what they learned—especially the principles we targeted like diffusion, osmosis, and embryology."

The results were clear and immediate: Most of the girls who were in Shope's regular classes improved by an entire letter grade or more. "One girl, who came into the lunch program with a D in science ended up with an A in the second semester," says Shope, with a note of wonder in her voice. "After lunchtime science, you could see her raising her hand more and being more confident in science class."

A dozen girls attended the sessions regularly, and nine signed up again—serving as mentors to the second cohort of students in the program. One Garfield senior was eager to participate again because "Jessica is such an awesome person, and I wanted to help people just coming in." But more than that, she found the information she learned in the first session was useful. "An issue would come up with my friends and I'd say, 'You need to take folic acid or you should take vitamins [before getting pregnant].'"

Another student says studying with a group of girls made a difference to her. "Being with all girls made it easier for us to go through all the steps... We got to go over the material more than if you were in a regular class and I learned more doing hands-on things."

Shope, who's been teaching biology and integrated science for four years, reflects on what she learned from the experience. She says, "It helped me realize that whether or not kids are interested [in the subject], if I can build a relationship, they'll work harder because they know I respect them. To some kids, grades are really important but to most kids here, they could care less. Relationships are way more important."

Thompson thinks there are different "take-away messages" from the program for different audiences. For educators, knowing the importance of developing relationships and targeting students' interests shouldn't just inform a lunchtime science event, but should influence how curriculum is designed for any class. "That's what I'm imagining as the next phase of my research: How do we integrate the properties of lunchtime science into the classroom and does it work?"

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