OUR EXPERIENCE AS UNDERGRADUATE INSTRUCTORS FOR THE GEOFORCE 12TH GRADE CENTRAL TEXAS ACADEMY

GeoFORCE is an out-of-school time (OST) program in UT’s Jackson School of Geosciences that aims to increase diversity in the geosciences by exposing Texas high school students underrepresented in STEM to geoscience through weeklong summer field courses. Although two-thirds of alumni pursue STEM majors, less than 20% enter geosciences. In summer 2018, GeoFORCE piloted a new model of instruction with four groups of rising 12th grade students. Curriculum for the 12th grade Central Texas Summer Academy was organized within the framework of the STAR Legacy Cycle in which a challenge drives collaborative learning. Here, we describe implementation of the Legacy Cycle by a multi-person instructional team with diverse competencies. The team approach replaced the lecture-based style of instruction delivered by a single content expert. Composed of two geoscience experts (faculty member, research scientist or PhD graduate student), an educational coach (master science teacher), and three undergraduate geoscience majors or preservice teachers who serve as education coaches-in-training (ECITs), the instructional team facilitated learning and guided students to acquire the knowledge and skills needed to solve the challenge. We also offer our perspective as ECITs on the successes and hurdles that we encountered as members of a multi-person instructional team and the transition from direct teaching to an active learning approach. One success was the ability to emphasize critical, creative thinking on a multi-disciplinary level to individual students and monitor each student’s contribution in the creative process. One difficulty we experienced was actually getting the students to address the specific requirements of the challenge and follow the Legacy Cycle model without reducing their creative freedom. Our presentation concludes with a summary of the ways in which participation in GeoFORCE impacted our personal and professional growth.