GLOBE News
Montana Middle Schoolers Excel with GLOBE Mentors
Bill Becker first learned about GLOBE when he brough his middle school students to a high school symposium on air quality research at the University of Montana in Missoula. Bill is a math teacher at Ronan Middle School in Ronan, Montana, and he also teaches an advanced academic elective class. He uses the elective to teach students that what they’re learning in the classroom can be extrapolated to life outside the classroom and to push them beyond their comfort level. This elective is where he introduces GLOBE to his students.
Bill likes that GLOBE doesn’t just give him preset lessons and data sets, but it gives him contacts of people who can provide opportunities in areas where they show interest. “My kids are really interested in snow science. We can take that idea and hook them up with NASA engineers or university professors. It gives them more connection.”
One way that Bill connects his middle school students to other community members is by bringing in his previous students as mentors. Lexie Gauthier first started mentoring Bill’s students as a high school student. When she went to college, she continued mentoring them by putting together lessons and video conferencing with the class.
Lexie is not a STEM major (she is a double major in government and linguistics) but she realized she could use the skills she learned doing GLOBE research in any field of study. She said she wanted to inspire students and give them tools to learn. She was also invited to attend the 2024 GLOBE Pacific and Northwest Student Research Symposium (SRS) at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, where she participated as a reviewer of student projects.
Other mentors have worked with younger students to train them in GLOBE protocols, help them choose research topics, conduct research, and enter data.
Bill’s middle schoolers gained confidence through their peer mentoring. They traveled to two GLOBE SRS (2023 in Fairbanks, Alaska, and 2024 in Pasadena, California) to share their research with other students and STEM professionals.
In 2024, they used their research presentation from the GLOBE SRS to present at a high school competition at the University of Montana. They presented in front of 200 people and took second place. Bill said, “We were the only middle school represented and to have our kids take second really spoke volumes as to how driven they are and how seriously they take this stuff.”
Some students, he says, try out data collection with GLOBE and decide it’s more than they’re comfortable doing, it’s not for them. For other students, they dabble in it and find it really suits them and then they take off on their own. “Then I, as a teacher, am more of a facilitator than I am an instructor. I’m providing the keys for these kids to open up whatever doors they are interested in.”
Watch Bill and Lexie in the GLOBE Learning Session “Engaging GLOBE Alumni to Promote, Support, and Sustain the GLOBE Program.”
Ronan Middle School Student Research Symposium Projects
2023 Northwest SRS (University of Alaska Fairbanks, Fairbanks, Alaska):
- How Low Can You Go: Lat. & Long. Humidity, Ronan Middle School
- How's the Air 'Round There?, Ronan Middle School
2024 Pacific and Northwest SRS (Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California):
- What's in Your Air?, Ronan Middle School, MT
- Biodiversity is HOT!, Ronan Middle School, MT
- Are Higher Temperatures Causing Fires on the Flathead Reservation?, Ronan Middle School, MT
News origin: United States of America