How to Coordinate Double X

1. Draft a proposal for funding. Write a one-page summary that includes: background, goals, duties, and funding needs.
2. Find high school contact teachers. They must be willing to put up the flyer, encourage kids to come, and host the club in their classrooms. Visit the school sites before you have to take student teachers there.
3. Find Berkeley student teachers. Send out an email inviting everyone to a dinner information session. Use contacts provided by the Outreach Office, plus SWPS and last year's members.
4. Organize the information session. Order food, make a handout that includes contact info, purpose, background on schools, lesson ideas, and sample lesson. Post fliers about the event, and remind people a week before and also the day before the information session.
5. Match student teachers and organize dates. Pair up teachers by friends, lesson topic and/or scheduling needs. Choose a "crowd pleaser" as the first lesson and save the tougher or more intricate lessons for later. Make sure to pair less confident student teachers with more confident ones.
6. Organize lesson-planning meetings. For each lesson, send out a reminder email about a week and a half before the day of presentation. These meetings take about an hour.
7. Prep for the meeting. Use the information that the student teachers gave on their information sheets about possible lessons to do a web search for lesson ideas and supporting materials. You can send this to the student teachers before the meeting or bring it with you.
8. Run the lesson-planning meeting. Start with their ideas. Bring sample lesson plans along so that they can see what the right range of difficulty is. Use the following questions as a guide:
a. What subject matter are you interested in teaching? (Is it information you feel very comfortable with? Are you pretty sure they don't already do it in their science class?)
b. What aspects of it will be interesting or exciting to high school students?
c. What mini-lab or activity will they do as the focus of the time? (30-40 minutes) How can you build problem-solving or discovery into the experience?
d. What information do they need going into the activity for them to understand it and be successful?
e. Are the materials necessary for this activity affordable/borrowable and easy to transport?
f. How will you gather results of their experiments, discuss what they learned, etc.?
g. What follow-up resources can you provide for students with further curiosity?
h. When can the student teacher give you a draft of the lesson and supporting materials?
9. Follow-up. Proofread the lesson. Make sure all definitions are written in appropriate language. Make sure that directions are clear and make sense. Make sure there is room for students to write data. Designate a time and meeting place for you to escort student teachers to the school sites.
10. Assemble necessary materials. Get BART/bus fare/tickets and snacks. Keep all your receipts. Get in touch with high school contact teachers if you need special materials - TV/VCR, overhead projector, etc.
11. Escort and set up. Go with student teachers to school sites and help them set up for the lesson.
12. Open the meeting. Introduce the student teachers and the topic. Introduce the students to one another on the first few visits.
13. Assist with the meeting. Make sure students understand directions, have necessary materials, are understanding things.
14. Clean up. Escort student teachers back to campus if necessary. Make sure you've designated a meeting place for the next session.
15. Begin the planning cycle again. Make arrangements for the next session.



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