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Teachers | UCAR Center for Science Education

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Supporting weather and climate learning, The UCAR Center for Science Education provides online educational resources and professional development opportunities for educators.

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The National Center for Atmospheric Research

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The National Center for Atmospheric Research

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Visit | UCAR Center for Science Education

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The National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) sits nestled against the foothills to the Rocky Mountains. NCAR's Visitor Center, open to the public seven days a week, offers state-of-the-art exhibits, a variety of public tour options, and custom school field trips.

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NASA.gov brings you the latest images, videos and news from America's space agency. Get the latest updates on NASA missions, watch NASA TV live, and learn about our quest to reveal the unknown and benefit all humankind.

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View all blog posts with the "educator" tag in them. It is an educator's goal to get students excited and inspired in the topic they are teaching. From a

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Colorado Framework for School Behavioral Health

Overview:

Colorado Framework for School Behavioral Health Download the complete School Behavioral Health Framework All In: Using Advisory to Transform School Climate

Audience: Administrators, Community Partners, Educators, Policy Makers

Creating an Allies in Diversity Program

Overview:

This guide provides step-by-step instructions for establishing an Allies Club in your school. The guidelines are drawn in large part from the experiences of six Colorado middle schools as they created and sustained their Allies clubs.

Audience: Administrators, Educators

TIME Collaborative: Expanding the School Day

Overview:

How schools structure time can determine whether students succeed. Learn how Colorado schools have created more and better learning time that has closed equity and achievement gaps.

Audience: Administrators, Community Partners, Educators

Designing Community Partnerships to Expand Student Learning Toolkit

Overview:

Community partnerships can create next generation learning environments that expand learning time, engage students, and energize communities. See this step-by-step guide.

Audience: Administrators, Community Partners, Educators

Connecting Health and Learning is Vital to Student Success: An Overview of Relevant Research

Overview:

Use this resource to help make the case about the connection between health and student and staff success. It's an overview of relevant research and literature, including key facts, quotes, and references - and success stories from Colorado schools and districts that have seen the benefits of addressing health and wellness.

Audience: Administrators, Community Partners, Educators, Policy Makers

Navigating Change

Overview:

Are you leading or working through a change process? This tool maps the stages of change with things that you may see and hear at each stage, along with questions you might ask to maximize your conversations by meeting people where they are in the change process.

Audience: Administrators, Community Partners, Educators, Policy Makers

Transforming School Climate Toolkit

Overview:

"... a 2011 study showing that evidence-based instruction in social and emotional learning boosts academic achievement by, on average, 11 points on standardized tests." ... read more →

Audience: Administrators, Community Partners, Educators

Myth Busters

Overview:

Dealing with Pushback Creating a healthy school that serves nutritious meals, teaches children about healthy eating, provides lots of opportunities for physical activity and offers... read more →
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Tools & Resources - The Colorado Education Initiative

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Since the 2016 election, scientists nationwide have been motivated to stand up for science. Whether it's showing up to rallies, calling senators, or submitting hundreds of letters to newspapers, scientists are standing up and turning out in support of science.

Let's not stop now. We want to foster the next generation of impactful science advocates and keep this momentum going.

The UCS Science Network is excited to launch the second round of a science advocacy leadership development program: the Science Network Mentor Program. The Mentor Program will connect early career scientists with mentors experienced in science advocacy. Together, you will create a project designed to strengthen the role of science in decisionmaking.

Join a community of inspiring early career and more established scientists committed to pushing back against attacks on science and protecting the vital role of science in democracy and social justice.

Find more information, including program eligibility requirements:

We Need Your Support
to Make Change Happen

We can ensure that decisions about our health, safety, and environment are based on the best available science-but not without you. Your generous support helps develop science-based solutions for a healthy, safe, and sustainable future.

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Since the 2016 election, scientists nationwide have been motivated to stand up for science . Whether it's showing up to rallies, calling senators, or submitting hundreds of letters to newspapers, scientists are standing up and turning out in support of science. Let's not stop now.

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Women working in science, technology, engineering and mathematics at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory pose for a photo in mission control in honor of Women in Science Day. Photo: NASA/JPL-Caltech

In the state of Colorado, there are just over two million women, making up 53% of the enrolled undergraduate population and 50% of the workforce. However, women account for only 33% of those graduating with degrees in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) and hold only 26% of STEM jobs in the state. Colorado is not unique - this disparity in STEM education and employment is a nation-wide trend. This disparity begins early, with difference in male and female student interest in STEM showing up as early as middle school, by some estimates, and female students being more likely to self-describe themselves as "bad at math" as early as second grade. These differences in encouragement and interest have broad-reaching, profound, and lifelong implications for women's economic security, career advancement, and workforce readiness compared to their male counterparts.

It is up to each and every one of us to change this reality. My name is Marian Hamilton, and I hold a PhD in Biological Anthropology and am an Assistant Professor at the University of Northern Colorado (UNCO). As a participant in the Union of Concerned Scientist's (UCS) Science Network Mentor Program, I had the pleasure of learning the basics of advocacy and community organizing from some of the nation's most passionate, creative, and qualified scientists over the past 10 months. Armed with these tools, I am forming a Women in STEM group for interested undergraduate students at UNCO with three major objectives: first, to build a community that encourages, supports, and empowers women, particularly from minority or underrepresented groups, to choose majors and careers in STEM fields; second, to facilitate mentor partnerships at the K-12, college, and professional level; and third, to advocate for policies that will improve STEM education across Colorado and the nation, such as universal pre-K. Today, I want to share with you some of the key lessons I'll be taking with me into this project:

Lesson 1: It starts early

Girls begin losing interest in STEM - or being told that they are "not good at" STEM fields - tragically early. For example, male high school students are more likely to enroll in engineering and computer science classes than their female classmates, and more likely to enroll in AP computer science classes, according to the National Girls Collaborative Project. The gap between white and non-white students in such high school classes is even starker: black and Latinx students were significantly less likely to enroll in advanced science courses than their white classmates.

To change the societal biases that drive such disparities, we must start young, with universal access to pre-K programs that include a STEM component. Ballot measures like Initiative 93 in Colorado, on the ballot in November, would support all-day Kindergarten; withdrawn measures such as Initiative 98 would have provided full day pre-K to Colorado citizens and need to be revisited in upcoming election cycles. This Women in STEM group will support and advocate for such measures to appear on future ballots because fully funding early childhood education helps all students achieve in future STEM classes. Beyond this, such measures also help to close the achievement gap between wealthy and non-wealthy students, such that one's readiness for the K-12 classroom - and the STEM classes therein - is not dependent on that child's zip code.

Lesson 2: It takes a village

Changing a system is not something that happens in a vacuum. In fact, research suggests that one of the most effective ways to keep girls in STEM is through mentorship, such as bringing in current college students as mentors to K-12 classrooms. We will implement such a program through the Women in Science group, partnering with public schools across northern Colorado.

As part of the Science Network Mentor Program, we learned about the importance of 'democratizing' science, and employing our skill sets as scientists to be tools for the community to employ, rather than trying to engineer solutions from the outside. For us, this means not assuming that this gap in STEM enrollment originates from the same place for all schools, or even all individuals. We need to begin conversations with teachers, with students, and with families about what opportunities they crave, what barriers they face, and what skills and tools would be the most useful. Furthermore, this work is necessarily intersectional; building gender diversity in STEM is only one of the facets by which we must work to diversify our STEM workforce. The Women in STEM group will collaborate closely with other cultural centers across campus, ensuring that we are diverse across all identities.

Lesson 3: We are all in this together

Study after study demonstrates that one of the most effective, efficient, and powerful ways to change perspectives and encourage diversity in STEM is through mentorship. Women in engineering paired with a female mentor, for example, experienced more of a sense of belonging, motivation, and confidence in their work, as well as greater aspiration to remain in the field. Through this Women in STEM club at UNCO, we will work to tie mentors and mentees together through all levels of education, putting college students with high school and middle school students and bringing in professionals in STEM fields to mentor the college students in turn.

Beyond this, we must work to change the entire ecosystem within which women in STEM fields work. For example, we will strongly advocate for family-friendly policies at the state and local level, including paid family leave. At the local level, we will lobby for the maintenance and expansion of university policies such as sabbaticals which facilitate continued engagement with STEM research, particularly for women and minority faculty who historically take on disproportionate service and teaching loads during typical semesters. Through this three-pronged approach of building community, facilitating mentorship, and advocating for education- and research-friendly policies at all levels of government, it is my truest hope and expectation that we can make the STEM workforce in Colorado a reflection of the powerful diversity of people that call this state home.
Marian Hamilton holds a PhD in Evolutionary Anthropology from the University of New Mexico. She is a former middle school science teacher and currently an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Northern Colorado, where she researches human evolution and paleoenvironments. Dr. Hamilton is wild about women in STEM, educational equity, wildlife and habitat conservation, and her dog, Gedi. Science Network Voices gives Equation readers access to the depth of expertise and broad perspective on current issues that our Science Network members bring to UCS. The views expressed in Science Network posts are those of the author alone.

Posted in: Science Communication Tags:#WomenInSTEM, diversity in STEM, equity, mentorship, science education, Science Network Mentor Program

Support from UCS members make work like this possible. Will you join us? Help UCS advance independent science for a healthy environment and a safer world.

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Fighting for a Diverse and Equitable STEM Workforce in Colorado

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In the state of Colorado, there are just over two million women, making up 53% of the enrolled undergraduate population and 50% of the workforce.

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This Is What STEM Looks Like! - The Women's Foundation of Colorado

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We Believe Teaching Is About Inspiring Lives

Dear Educators -

I believe in the ideal that teaching is about inspiring lives. That when we show up and lead with our enthusiasm for literature and physics and life sciences and art that we open minds and hearts. That course content is little without the life we bring to it. That our belief in our students' brilliance will help them do great things - even when they most challenge us and we want to quit and change professions.

I believe that teaching - in formal and informal settings - is about inspiring lives, even in the face of challenges to Learning. Because if Learning isn't happening, what are we doing as educators?

So what does Pretty Brainy offer you? Resources. Inspiration. Learning Kits to Empower Students. To Think, Create, Innovate, Collaborate.

What guides your purpose?
As teachers how can we tap in to what drives our students in order to help them learn?
You may appreciate this piece I wrote for Edutopia, To Help Students Learn, Appeal to What They Value."

Principal Christine Hendricks calls Pretty Brainy a "learning-centered environment." Focusing on students is what drew me to teaching and what keeps me excited. Even in the face of great challenge.

For you Pretty Brainy's learning- and student-centered resources can -

Enhance and extend your curriculum,

Be the basis for your STEM club,

Serve your maker spaces,

Fulfill the requirements of your STEAM and STEM grants and

Help you be the STEAM learning hub for your community.

Learn how to get Pretty Brainy into your school or enrichment program.

With thanks and enthusiasm for a new school day,

Heidi Olinger

P.S. I founded Pretty Brainy on three principle things -

One, my drive to prevent a little girl from experiencing the downward academic spiral that can come with adolescence.

Two, my work with students provisionally admitted to a university that was hanging campus diversity on students whose K-12 years had left them unequipped to succeed in college.

Three, the perspective that education has a responsibility to prepare students to develop a voice and the ability to critically think when using that voice. To prepare students to form questions. Collaborate. Attend to detail. Develop empathy. Mathematically reason. And gain experience in the process of learning, including how to revise, prototype, experiment, fail, develop character from doing so, and keep moving forward.

These inform the resources Pretty Brainy has for you.

Learn how to bring Pretty Brainy to you.

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Dear Educators - I believe in the ideal that teaching is about inspiring lives. That when we show up and lead with our enthusiasm for literature and physics and life sciences and art that we open minds and hearts. That course content is little without the life we bring to it.

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Colorado Collaborative for Girls in STEM (CoCoSTEM)

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Colorado Collaborative for Girls in STEM (CoCoSTEM)

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Colorado Collaborative for Girls in STEM (CoCoSTEM) | National Girls Collaborative Project

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The National Girls Collaborative Project brings together organizations throughout the United States and Puerto Rico that are committed to informing and encouraging girls to pursue careers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM)

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Girls At the Museum Exploring Science (GAMES)

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Girls At the Museum Exploring Science (GAMES)

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CU Public Outreach and Community Engagement - Girls At the Museum Exploring Science (GAMES)

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Girls At the Museum Exploring Science (GAMES) is a unique program designed to encourage interest and excitement about science in 4th and 5th grade girls. The program consists of six weekly after school visits to the University of Colorado Museum of Natural History (CU Museum).

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Girls in STEM inspires girls to visualize themselves in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math careers. We envision a world where women feel confident to pursue STEM professions and are equally represented in the STEM workforce.

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Cool Girls will host a booth at this years Chinese New Year Celebration on February 16th, 2019.

This is a free Open-to-Public event at Silver Creek High School (4901 Nelson Road, Longmont, CO 80503) from 2-5pm.

Have you ever wondered how electricity is generated from wind? Wind is the best renewable energy source around and Colorado has a lot of WIND. At our booth, with a few simple household items, you can design and build your very own wind turbine. Once built, you can test your wind turbine by hooking it up to a volt meter and seeing how much electricity your design produces.
How Wind Turbines works:
Wind turbines generate electricity by converting kinetic energy to electrical energy. Typically, the wind rotates the blades of a turbine, which turns a shaft that is connected to a generator that produces electricity.
Colorado Wind Facts:

Wind is the fastest growing energy resource on Colorado the grid

17.3% of electricity in Colorado is generated by wind

Colorado wind manufacturing and operations jobs totaled over 6,000

Cool Girls Science and Art Club Information: Since 2008, the mission has been to engage young girls from diverse socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds in entrepreneurship, Science, Technology, Engineering, the Arts and Mathematics (e-STEAM) so they have the desire, confidence and skills to sustain their contributions to the community throughout their personal, academic and professional journeys.

The Longmont club meets on Wednesday's at 5:00 - 6:30pm. Each semester the girls choose topics they are curious about and we invite mentors from those areas. The low mentor-to-girl ratio fosters a high level of interaction in an engaging and friendly learning environment.

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Cool Girls Hosts Booth at the Chinese New Year Celebration Event! - Cool Girls Science and Art Club

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Cool Girls will host a booth at this years Chinese New Year Celebration on February 16th, 2019. This is a free Open-to-Public event at Silver Creek High School (4901 Nelson Road, Longmont, CO 80503) from 2-5pm. Have you ever wondered how electricity is generated from wind?

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Colorado Succeeds: Business Leaders for Education

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We are the business leaders of Colorado, who have joined forces to make sure the education system works better and smarter for all the people of Colorado.

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