Chelsea Teacher PD

An initial test of this interdisciplinary internship approach took the form of a one-day workshop at the New York Hall of Science on January 28, 2014. All of the 9th grade teachers from the Chelsea CTE High School (a NetSci High partner school) attended, representing English, Algebra, Global Studies, Special Education, Living Environment, Career Management, Graphic Arts, and Technology. The Assistant Principal also attended. They received an introduction to Network Science through participation in a data-gathering exercise that resulted in a network visualization, plus several presentations of case studies – illustrating how all of their teaching disciplines can use the Network Science approach – as well as an introduction to Gephi. During the second half of the day the teachers mapped their curriculum to Network Science concepts, and drew connections among their curricular themes in order to choose interdisciplinary topics. A short survey given at the end of the workshop showed a majority of the teachers to have a high degree of confidence in their grasp of Network Science concepts.

The teachers will continue to meet weekly (with guidance from NetSciHigh participants) to refine the curricular topics and construct lesson plans. The topics will be team taught across disciplines during the Spring 2014 semester. Using this model an entire grade within a high school will be exposed to network Science. Both teachers and students will receive support from NetSci High partners in the form of mentoring, with specific emphasis on using Gephi. An in-depth survey will be given to teachers and students near the end of the school year, and their feedback will be incorporated into the planning of the summer internship and workshop to be held in the summer of 2015.