I’m excited to announce that I will soon be taking on a newly created role at the Academy, the Senior Instructional Design Lead for Science Action Club. This is a new position working with our largest youth program, the Science Action Club (SAC), a high-impact STEM learning program that designs professional development and teaching kits for middle school afterschool providers. Through games, projects, and hands-on activities, youth in SAC investigate nature and use citizen science to document their discoveries, share data with professional scientists, and design strategies to protect our planet.
Specifically, I will be helping to scale the Science Action Club to reach many more youth across the country through supporting and training afterschool providers. I’ll be developing online and in-person learning experiences for afterschool educators that prepare them to deliver STEM programs effectively. And I will be working with partners to scale the reach of Science Action Club from 120 sites in California to a nationwide audience.
Meanwhile, the Digital Learning TechTeens will continue as a youth program at the Academy, primarily focused on supporting “Do Now” at KQED and other social media science projects. They will work under the guidance of Jeff Dam, the youth programs coordinator, who has been co-facilitating the TechTeens with me for the past year and knows the program very well. I have every confidence that Jeff will do an outstanding job with our TechTeens.
While I will miss working with the TechTeens, I’m excited about this new challenge and awesome team that I get to work with at SAC. It’s going to be an exciting next few months!