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The Tour

The Community Science WorkshopA New Paradigm for Informal Education

Curt GabrielsonThe Watsonville Environmental Science Workshop

What if every kid had access to a real workshop? Like the ones in the corners of garages across the country: a basic array of

tools, bits and pieces of hardware, piles of scrap materials and fasteners, plus stacks of unsorted boxes containing the remnants

of projects gone by. Visualize also that the workshop held a few musical instruments—guitars, a keyboard, some percussion—

as well as art supplies: markers, paints, clay and the tools to shape it, ribbons, glitter, beads, fabric, etc. On top of this, picture

the workshop having a few hands-on exhibits to explore and manipulate—a vacuum chamber, a Van de Graff generator, a

stripped-down motor—and even a few small pets and planter boxes. Finally, what if this workshop was open to all kids in the

community and they could freely gather there after school and work on projects of their own choice? Sounds like an

educational dream? To me it does, and I have been running one in Watsonville, California, for the last ten years.

In the other half of the room are three largeworkbenches and a small selection of tools glis-tening nearby. Along the left are counters withhot glue guns, ready to glue. A jigsaw and drillpress stand waiting. Along the other two walls,stacks of scrap wood and other materials beckonfrom every nook. Out back, glimpse our disksander and welding and metalworking area.

What are all these projects adorning everyinch of the walls and ceiling? Some are classicwoodshop fare—birdhouses, shelves, jewelryboxes—while others—amplifiers and blinkinglight circuits—may be found in any introduc-tory electronics course. Many are toys: chirp-ing birds, helicopters and marble pinball ma-chines. A lot of them make noise: flutes, drums,guitars, marimbas and whistles. Some are meantfor learning—puzzles and games—and othersare art—wind chimes and holiday light displays.Reused, recycled materials make up the base ofthem. Many of the best ones have resulted fromthe random tinkering of our young participants.

If you brought kids with you on this hy-pothetical tour, they may already be choosingtheir materials for a project. Two adults andsome high school students are on hand to helpthem if they need it. Parents routinely comewith their kids to make projects for both funand utility.

Everyone here has chosen to be here and todo what they’re now doing. This is the core pro-

gram: open structure, open-door hours, fourweekdays after school and on Saturdays. Whilestaff are always involved in developing the nextgreat project, we do not impose curriculum ofany kind. (We do consistently promote the safeuse of tools and systematically teach methodsof conservation, recycling and waste reduction.)

Aside from the afterschool individual drop-in program, school groups visit several timesper week. We also run the Students TeachingProject, in which high school students takeprojects from the workshop to afterschool pro-grams at twenty local elementary and middleschools. Periodically, we travel with participantson science field trips and camping adventuresto local sloughs, beaches, forests and even tothe Sierra Mountains. We sometimes do teachertraining.

Local school teachers and administratorsare appreciative of the role we play in the edu-cational community. Most teachers think we’regreat, and they enjoy making things in ourworkshop as much as their kids do. We also helpkids with homework, but we don’t prioritizehomework help. We complement what schoolsoffer. Some families, especially those who havemeans and opportunities, find access to thekinds of experiences we offer, but what we dois simply not present in the vast majority ofclassrooms today. WESW focuses on makingthese experiences available to kids from fami-

José Lopez rides thewater bike he helpedmake at the WastonsvilleEnvironmental ScienceWorkshop on aworkshop-sponsoredsummer science campingtrip to Shaver Lake inthe Sierra Mountains.

L et me show you around the Watsonville En-vironmental Science Workshop (WESW).

Watsonville is an agricultural town located be-tween Santa Cruz and Monterey, California,with a population that is roughly seventy-fivepercent Mexican or Mexican-American, manyof whom tend and harvest the country’s straw-berries, raspberries and apples. To begin ourtour, first, walk through downtownWatsonville’s Marinovich Park and enter theCommunity Center. The WESW occupies onequarter of this modest building, which alsoholds a computer center and multipurposeroom. “Occupies” is the word, with scarcely ablank space on the walls or ceiling. Everywhereis evidence of potential projects, completedprojects, projects in process and project mod-els for others to emulate. Walk by a tower offabric next to a sewing machine hemmed in bydozens of needle and yarn work examples. Thenmeet our hamster, snake, fish, starter plants andexhibits. Check out a few musical instrumentsalong with an oscilloscope ready to chart anysound wave produced.

There are tables in the center of the roomand a white board on the opposite wall. Formalclasses are held here several times a week underdangling multicolored polyhedrons and othersmall project models and art pieces.

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Martiza, a local high school helper, workswith a young workshop participant to drill

holes for her woodpecker project.

lies with low incomes and from ethnic and oreconomic groups often under-represented inuniversities. What we do at WESW works wellfor many children of the Mexican and Mexi-can-American farm workers who make up themajority of Watsonville’s population. Staff of-ten hears from kids, “I’m not good at math/science/English/school.” Indeed, for many stu-dents who receive an unequivocal label of “fail-ure” in the classroom, it can be a life-changingexperience to achieve success, with accompa-nying confidence, in our space after school.

History

The unique idea of a Community ScienceWorkshop (CSW) began in the garage of DanSudran in the Mission district of San Francisco.Around 1990, having turned away from hiscareer in law, Dan spent a lot of time doingscience on his own. Then still ungentrified, theMission was home to many low-income Latinoand Asian families. Since Dan’s garage door wasopen, local kids from his street crept in. Bones,rocks, fossils, plants, bugs under a microscopeand piles of electronic components both in-spired and taught these new young scientists.Slowly the idea crystallized and Dan securedsupport from both San Francisco State Uni-versity and City College of San Francisco tofound the Mission Science Workshop (MSW)in 1991.

He moved from his garage to a new spacewithin walking distance from thousands offamilies in the Mission. The Exploratorium of-fered some assistance and a number of old ex-hibits. In 1995, with the collaboration of SanFrancisco State University Dean Paul Fonteyn,MSW scored a National Science Foundation(NSF) grant to propagate CSWs to other citiesin California. Soon there were workshops in SanJose, Fresno, Los Angeles and Oakland. I wasworking at MSW and at the ExploratoriumTeacher Institute then and was ready to leavethe big city. In 1997 I made some connectionsin Watsonville, a small town with big-city prob-lems, and opened a CSW here.

In 2001, another NSF grant was receivedby MSW to spread the idea nationwide. Now,CSWs are open in Boston, Newark, Washing-ton, Miami, New Orleans and Houston. Eachis autonomous, and they vary greatly in goalsand objectives and in programs offered. Work-shop directors are currently working to build anetwork to support each other and to foster thecreation of more CSWs. Inverness Research As-sociates, evaluator for both of the NSF expan-

sion grants, recently published a final report thatis extremely favorable to the CSW concept.

Why Science?

Before I lay out some of the CommunityScience Workshop’s philosophical justification,let me pause with a blunt question: Do we needjustification? If you hang around WESW, you’llsee it fill up day after day with students gainingsatisfaction, skills and knowledge from theprojects they construct. Isn’t that enough to call

it a success? With so many of our youth inharm’s way—so many dropouts and youthgangs, so much teen pregnancy and drug use—we feel WESW is justified in the social realmbefore we even begin to consider what or howmuch knowledge it offers kids.

At a fundamental level, WESW does youthdevelopment as well or better than a recreationprogram. It could even be described as a reccenter (free, drop-in, low structure) beefed upwith practical, rich and relevant science con-tent. Now let’s consider why our content isimportant.

Professor John G. King, my mentor atMIT, who won the 2000 Oersted Award forphysics teaching, often remarks, “There’s nosubstitute for hands-on fooling around with realstuff!” No professional scientist, engineer, orartist would take issue with this. People who

work with the physical world know that onemust spend time in close contact with thatworld, fiddling and observing, in order to un-derstand it. This is truer than ever in today’sworld of ubiquitous technology. At the sametime, today’s schools have shut out nearly allopportunity for teachers to give students thetime, space and materials to explore and ob-serve on their own terms.

Frank Oppenheimer, founder of theExploratorium (and another Oerstead Awardwinner) put it like this: “The notion that youcan learn everything without ever doing it, as issometimes implied in the classroom,is...outrageous, and the important thing in theExploratorium is that people feel free to touchthings, to change things, to make their owndiscoveries….It’s like the difference betweenteaching swimming in a classroom and teach-ing swimming in the bay.”

Most kids don’t get many opportunities toexplore and discover science at home either. DanSudran pointed out to me once that many kidstoday have not just zero but “negative” experi-ence with the real world. This arises from somuch time spent in the virtual worlds wherethe laws of nature do not necessarily hold. Of-fering students authentic experiences with thereal world is the first step toward their gainingan understanding of it.

Mini Science Center

There is a great need for another space—aside from the school space and the homespace—in which to learn. In Sheila Grinnell’sbook, A New Place for Learning Science, shewrites that the Association of Science-Technol-ogy Centers (ASTC) has noted a strong globalinterest in establishing new science centers.Their mission? Increase public familiarity “withthe objects and ideas of science and technol-ogy” (Grinnell 1992).

In a more recent edition of that same book,Grinnell describes various types of ASTC mu-seums. The smallest category contains mediannumbers roughly as follows: visits per year,60,000; full-time employees, 7; interior publicspace, 8,000 square feet; operating revenue,$633,000 (Grinnell 2003, 125).

Comparing a small science center with ourworkshop, including all WESW programs attwenty other school-based shared sites, WESWreceives 23,000 visits per year, has two full-timeemployees, $240,000 in annual expenses in1,200 square feet of space. That’s about thirty-five percent of the visits, employees and rev-

We complement what schools offer. Some families, especially those who have means and opportunities, find access to the

kinds of experiences we offer, but what we do is simply not present in the vast majority of classrooms today.

WESW focuses on making these experiences available to kids from families with low incomes and from ethnic and or economic

groups often under-represented in universities.

shop is affiliated with theSmithsonian Institution; and theHouston Community Science Work-shop is located at The Children’s Mu-seum of Houston. CSWs in Miamiand New Orleans are administeredby local nonprofit organizations;those in Boston, Los Angeles, SanJose and San Francisco are housed inpublic schools.

Still unexplored is the idea ofimplanting CSWs within well-re-spected, national organizations withestablished infrastructures, such asthe YMCA, Boys and Girls Clubs or4-H Clubs. A couple of successesworking in organizations like thesemay spawn hundreds of others.

Community Science Workshopsserve needs that are growing rapidly.They work well in diverse and un-

der-represented communities, they are cost-ef-fective and they allow full community collabo-ration. They uniquely complement both schoolcurriculum and other, more formal afterschoolprograms. Wouldn’t you love one in your neigh-borhood?

Curt Gabrielson has a BS in physics fromMIT, but he learned most of the useful things heknows growing up on a hog farm in Missouri.Gabrielson may be contacted atcgabrielson@ci.watsonville.ca.us

ENDNOTES

1. Curt Gabrielson. Stomp Rockets, Cata-pults, and Kaleidoscopes: 30+ Amazing ScienceProjects You Can Build for Less than $1. ChicagoReview Press, 2008. This book, to be releasedin February 2008, includes some of the mostpopular WESW projects.

2. The complete report on the expansionof science workshops is available atw w w. i n v e r n e s s - r e s e a r c h . o r g / c s w /1_welcome.html.

3. Quotes by Frank Oppenheimer can befound at www.exploratorium.edu/frank/frank_quotes.html

4. Sheila Grinnell, A New Place for Learn-ing Science, Washington, DC: Association ofScience-Technology Centers, 1992.

5. Barbara Rogoff, et. al. “Children’s De-velopment of Cultural Repertoires ThroughParticipation in Everyday Routines and Prac-tices,” in J.E. Grusec and P.D. Hastings (Eds.),Handbook of Socialization: Theory and Research(pp. 490-515) New York, NY: The GuilfordPress, 2007.

with expertise in some realm of science andenough experience in hands-on work i.e. car-pentry, electrical, construction, lab, to make itall work. Each CSW has a space, sometimesshared, where students may engage in construc-tion. And each has a plan—some more success-ful than others—to maintain long-term finan-cial sustainability from local sources.

Most CSWs rely on support from severalsources including the city government, theschool district and grants. In Watsonville, wework to get consistent, line-item funding inplace from the city of Watsonville while we pur-sue onetime grant opportunities when they arise.The Oakland, Fresno and Watsonville CSWsreside in parks and are administered by the mu-nicipal government. WESW is in the Depart-ment of Public Works under environmentaleducation programs; Oakland and Fresno CSWsare each contained within those two cities’ parksand recreation departments. Some CSWs areattached to museums. The Community ScienceCenter in Newark, New Jersey, is affiliated withthe Liberty Science Center; Washington, D.C.’sColumbia Heights Community Science Work-

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enue in about fifteen percent of thespace. Just after WESW opened, at-tendance was only 8,000 visitors peryear, but costs were less than $40,000/year. Even at that level WESW wasseen as a great community resourcein Watsonville. While our visitorsdon’t experience the richness and edu-cational value of the many polishedexhibits at a traditional science cen-ter, each WESW visitor can work onhis or her own project for as long asthey like, on their own or with help.They can even take them home tocontinue exploring—all for free.

Every community can have a sci-ence workshop, and each one can beintimately connected to its commu-nity and be continually responsive tothe community’s needs. On theWESW Web page,www.scienceworkshops.org/site/watsonville, thecore values and the benefits offered to our com-munity are listed. These lists will look differentfor different workshops in different communi-ties. The learning that happens in one locationis the learning that that community needs. ACSW is small enough that the community’sidentity and culture easily seep through the wallsand into its very design and structure. As thecurrent director of the Exploratorium, DennisBartels, recently said to me, “For better or worse,the forms of education are de-institutionaliz-ing. The community workshop idea is part ofthe most exciting end of the new educationallandscape because it breaks so many of the oldrules.”

WESW supporter and University of Cali-fornia, Santa Cruz, psychology professor Dr.Barbara Rogoff has researched and written ex-tensively on the traditions of learning in whicha community collaborates closely with children’slearning toward outcomes that have practicalbenefits for both the children and the commu-nity. She calls this “intent community partici-pation” and cites many distinct advantages ofthis type of learning over the “assembly-lineinstruction” that occurs in most schools (Rogoff2007). At a CSW, adults and children can workclosely toward mutual goals, and adults canlearn side by side with their children. This learn-ing environment is especially effective in thesmall community of Watsonville, where manyadults grew up in villages in Mexico and wherethese kinds of inter-generational learning tra-ditions were common.

Workshop Structure and Funding

There are many organizational modelsamong the existing community science work-shops. At a base level, each site has a director

Victor poses with Alex on the recumbentlow-rider trike he built at WESW.

The Watsonville Environmental Science Workshop: kids, adults, toolsand materials combine to produce projects of every kind. Says directorCurt Gabrielson, “Everyone here has chosen to be here and to do whatthey’re now doing. This is the core program: open structure, open-door

hours, four weekdays after school and on Saturdays.”

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