Science Coaches
Community Science Coaches Make Science Happen
The community science coaches are a group of community members who volunteer to help support science and natural resource education in Tillamook School District #9. They work as little or as much as they like in whatever capacity in which they feel comfortable. Some help out just once in the year at an event , while others help out at several events. We would not be able to make all these activities and programs happen without them.
Science coaches can be stay at home parents, grandparents, retired professionals, or working people who can get away from their jobs for a day or as part of their jobs.
Roles of Volunteers
Field Trips as an activity leader (labs and activities created by teachers, you facilitate student involvement)
Field Trips as an assistant (provide assistance setting and cleaning up and keeping activities running)
There are usually 60 - 200 students on each trip. We break them into groups of 8-15 and with six or more stations they rotate through. There are two replicates of each station for the large groups. We need 12 coaches for those field trips, smaller ones only require 6 coaches. We also have around 4-8 high school or community college students to help the community science coaches do their job, as well as chaperones.
There are also many in-class activities of only 30 students each. There are usually 1 to 3 science coaches helping with these.
Science Research:
Gradewide Science Research Projects are now carried out in different grade levels in the school district. This has only been possible for the past several years with involvement of community science coaches.
The role of the community science coaches is to sit down with individual students for 20 to 30 minutes and help them narrow down their topic to a project they can do at their grade level. The science coach then helps them design an experiment to answer the question. When the student leaves the science coach they will have a hypothesis, research plan with individual steps, deadlines, a list of materials and a table to record their data on. The science coach is not involved with the research following this activity.
A Science Coach can be as involved as they desire, working with one grade level or at many grade levels.