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Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History

Application and Information: Culturally Responsive Science Education Professional Learning Community

We’re excited to share that a new opportunity offered by the Smithsonian, a Culturally Responsive Science Education Professional Learning Community (PLC), is now accepting applications for its 2024-2025 cohort. The program provides an opportunity to engage in a professional learning community to examine how transdisciplinary experiences and resources from museums, archives, and the local community can be tools for cultivating culturally responsive lessons and instruction. In the program, teachers will take part in place-based experiential learning opportunities and resources in and around Washington, D.C., to examine environmental justice issues from a multidisciplinary perspective, weaving together science with the history and culture of Washington, D.C.  

These experiences will be paired with professional development from leading subject matter experts, and a supportive, professional learning community designed to help build knowledge and skills around culturally responsive teaching, natural history and conservation science and concepts, DC history and culture, and social science methods to examine environmental justice topics and uplift student and community voices in Washington, D.C.  

Teachers will apply the training and experiences to their classroom instruction by designing and implementing a project-based learning project with students that is focused on environmental justice, aligned with culturally responsive pedagogy and supplements or aligns with existing DC curriculum (e.g. environmental science, social studies, etc.). Teachers are expected to prepare a final display of students’ creative works, projects, and accomplishments during school year 2024-2025.

The Smithsonian will provide place-based experiences, professional development, and cohort coordination for ongoing learning, reflection, and community. During the process, teachers will be invited to present their final projects to Alaska-based educators at an education symposium hosted by the Smithsonian Arctic Studies Center in Anchorage, Alaska, in February 2025. The project team will also support local displays of final projects from their Alaska teacher counterparts and exchange ideas and reflections around their respective teaching practice.  

For their time and participation, teachers will receive a $2,000 stipend, a modest budget for project supplies, and airfare and lodging for the education symposium in Alaska.  

Teacher Benefits

  • $2,000 stipend paid incrementally over the six months  
  • Modest budget for supplies and materials for class projects  
  • Place-based experiential learning in Washington, D.C., around environmental justice issues that examine issues from science, history, and social contexts
  • Professional development focused on culturally responsive teaching, natural history and conservation science, and DC history and culture  
  • Professional learning community for peer support and collaboration  
  • Smithsonian support for classroom exhibitions of final projects  
  • Project symposium in Alaska to present your final projects (paid by Smithsonian)
  • Potential enhancement of classroom instruction and student engagement through the implementation of place-based learning on environmental justice topics that supplement the existing curriculum  
  • Access to Smithsonian and Community educators, experts, scientists, activists, historians, artists and others who can connect you to additional resources for classroom instruction  
  • Certificate of completion and acknowledgement of participation to school leadership from Smithsonian  

Eligibility Criteria

  • District of Columbia Public Schools (DCPS) high school teachers who apply in multidisciplinary pairs with another teacher from their school. One teacher must teach science and one must teach social studies. Marginal preference given to teacher pairs than include an environmental science teacher.  
  • At least 3 years of teaching experience  
  • Availability and commitment to participate in all or most major project activities (see application)  
  • Commitment to create a new environmental justice project with their students in the 2024-2025 school year
  • Preferential ratings for teaching applications will be given to teach pairs from DCPS Title I schools

Evaluation Criteria

Teacher applications will be reviewed and evaluated for demonstrated interest, willingness, and commitment to completing the project tasks and deliverables (see Scope of Work).  

Key Dates

  • Applications are due by: June 28, 2024
  • Teachers notified the week of July 1
  • Project will commence with a week-long kick off: July 29-August 2
  • Virtual participation in select sessions from the Culturally Responsive Teaching Conference hosted by Sealaska Heritage Institute: August 7-9
  • The place-based activities will occur 1x/month from August-December 2024. The exact dates of these excursions will be selected by the cohort to ensure maximum possible participation.  
  • Occasional instructional workshop(s) and support in a format and on dates to be determined in collaboration with the PLC participants
  • Project symposium hosted by the Arctic Studies Center in Anchorage, AK: tentatively February 14-17 (note that 2/14 is a DCPS PD day and 2/17 is a DCPS holiday).  

Scope of Work

For more information about the project and expectations for teacher tasks and deliverables, please reference the scope of work. This scope of work details expectations for teachers’ participation in project tasks and what they will be expected to deliver at the end of the project.  

Information Sessions

Join an information session to learn more:

  • Thursday, June 20, 10 a.m. and 2 p.m.
  • Friday, June 21, 10 a.m.

Email us for the Zoom link, NMNHschoolprograms@si.edu.

Apply

Questions

Please email questions to NMNHschoolprograms@si.edu.

FAQs

This an effort to create more peer support for you, enhance the project’s ability to be multidisciplinary, and it is a strategy for this kind of work to be sustained at your school.  

Please contact us if you feel like you have a special circumstance or could use some assistance finding a partner at your school.

Our project will be using the DCPS environmental science and social studies curriculums to guide the experiences and eventual teacher projects. Therefore, there will be preference given to teachers who teach these subjects.  

However, we welcome any DCPS high school teacher to apply; we know multidisciplinary teaching and learning does not stop with science and social studies!

A professional learning community is a team of educators who share ideas to enhance their teaching practice and create a learning environment where all students can reach their fullest potential. (source: ISTE)

Teachers accepted into the cohort will be considered Smithsonian vendors. They will be responsible for meeting the expectations outlined in the Scope of Work to receive payment and eligibility to travel to Alaska to present their final projects.

  • Culturally responsive pedagogies center the knowledge of traditionally marginalized communities in classroom instruction and results in all students, especially students of color, being empowered to become lifelong learners and critical thinkers (Will & Najarro, 2022).  
  • The goal of this project is to engage a cohort of Smithsonian educators and DC Public School teachers in a six-month professional learning community that provides experiential, place-based learning opportunities to build skills and practical application of culturally responsive pedagogy for transdisciplinary instruction.    
  • Teachers’ projects should reflect the three core tenets of culturally relevant pedagogy, as originally described by Gloria Ladson-Billings:  
    • Academic achievement and success for all students; holding everyone to high standards  
    • Cultural competence – affirm and promote students' expression of their culture in learning environments and treat it as an asset and expertise  
    • Critical consciousness – develop students' sense of critical consciousness and promote their critical thinking skills so they can question their social world  

A Community Based Approach to Culturally Responsive Science Education  

The National Museum of Natural History is managing a grant funded project, “A Community Based Approach to Culturally Responsive Sustaining Science Education.” To improve student achievement, engagement, self-image, critical thinking, and graduation rates, the project will create a framework that co-produces culturally responsive-sustaining education materials for K-12 science instruction. Using a design-based research approach with communities in Alaska and Washington, D.C., Smithsonian educators will convene community stakeholders as partners to co-create resources, with the shared goal of improving representation of cultural connections and histories in K-12 science education, while leveraging Smithsonian resources, spaces, and expertise. These new educational materials aim to better represent the cultures, lives, histories and historical and contemporary contributions of African American, American Indian and Alaskan Native communities and peoples, and the model for co-creation will be evaluated and shared with informal science, K-12, and community stakeholders and communities. The project is managed by the National Museum of Natural History in partnership with the Smithsonian’s Arctic Studies Center and the Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute.