Dear supporters…
Headwaters has been planning for the fall and figuring out how we can safely provide great educational opportunities to students. We have decided that we cannot run any overnight programs or programs in the classroom. However, we are excited to offer modified programs where scientists can mentor students digitally with some options for scientists to meet students in the field and support data collection. Our goal is to keep our staff, the teachers, and the students safe.
Free Materials: We have fantastic free digital resources on our website. Or, if you want full access to our google drive of materials we are asking for a donation for this access. Lessons are NGSS aligned and cover a variety of topics.
You can also bring a scientist into the classroom (digitally) to do a scientific talk with the students about their research. You choose the topic we find the scientist and make all the arrangements. We facilitate student questions to the scientist and a discussion after the talk. ($250 per session/ financial assistance is available for public schools that need it).
We are offering a modified Student Driven Research program where scientists will guide students through the question asking and project design data analysis and presentation building remotely. We have two options for the student’s data collection. First, our scientists meet the students in person at a field site for data collection with small groups. Everyone will have to wear masks and work in small groups. Second, each group of students will be assigned a scientist mentor that will virtually mentor during data collection. The students will have to collect simple data in the field on their own or use a public data set. We used this method in our summer research program with great success.
Students can sign up individually through our camp page for this 10-week program. We are offering an environmental science program where students conduct their own original research and end by submitting their discoveries to a science journal for publication. We have digital group sessions and we pair each student with a Headwaters scientist mentor to help them with their research. We are also offering a class on learning R that is focused on statistics and basic coding.
We want to help: We are here for you. Please let me know how we can help. Email me anytime to set up a meeting. We also have weekly office hours on Wednesday that you can drop into. This is a hard time for teachers, students, and families.
We are hopeful that things will change and we can make new plans for the winter or next spring, and are continually evaluating the situation. We will give another update during the fall about our plans for winter.
Stay safe, have fun with science, and let us know how we can help you!
Best,
Megan Seifert
Headwaters Executive Director
