Stars and STEM Stories
GLOBE Cohort Partner Bo Lebo Helps Students “Find a Voice” Using GLOBE Protocols
Bo Lebo at Sepulveda Wildlife Preserve near Lake Balboa in California, USA, announcing the GLOBE Trees Family Guide for Summer 2021. Photo taken by Brian Carrier, July 2021
As a North American GLOBE cohort partner, U.S. Department of Education (USDOE) and Los Angeles (California, USA) School District volunteer and grant recipient, Cynthyny (“Bo”) Lebo has been actively engaged in – and applying – GLOBE curriculum and protocols since 2015.
“I met with GLOBE Implementation Office Director Dr. Tony Murphy in 2015 to link the STEAM work we began in 2000 on the NASA Mars Millennium Project to the multiple GLOBE countries taking measurements,” Lebo said. “At the 2015 GLOBE Annual Meeting in Los Angeles, we performed our work featuring KidsFirst students (aged 6-9) performing in public for the first time William Elliott’s “The World Around Me” from his musical adaptation of Kenneth Grahame‘s famous The Wind in the Willows.”
“From 2018-2020, we have brought citizen science into classrooms and outdoors with students. By combining imagination, writing, and collaboration into instruction, we are exciting children about their studies. Children are finding a voice and building understanding about the world around them. Science through stories, floor tiles, and group presenting has made the GLOBE protocols come alive – working with farms, trees, stewardship, and soil. The children are excited and rise up and excel.”
At the 2021 GLOBE Annual Meeting, held virtually from 12-16 July 2021, Lebo is working with the University of Toledo, as well as global and national partners, to present a poster “Opening a New Chapter” (presented on 13 July). “With this poster, we will start to train teachers and open up STEM experiences using Musical Linguistics™ and My NASA data to reinforce student achievement,” Lebo said.
“Our poster, featuring the GLOBE Trees Family Guide (Trees Across the GLOBE Student Research Campaign), trees, climate change and artificial intelligence (AI), shows opportunities to teach children to save water, sequester carbon, support wildlife, read GLOBE storybooks, and report daily discoveries,” Lebo said. “As a result, at-risk inner city students have been transformed into seeing new futures for themselves and for their families, neighborhoods, and world.”
Lebo said that GLOBE has influenced the course of her STEM career in that “young children have used Elementary GLOBE resources to make global connections using STEAM research with their core studies. We introduced students to human and animal risks in a world with conditions such as air quality, wildfires, clouds, aerosols, and the urban heat island effect. Planting trees and managing water and soil are integrated into our daily curricula with other citizen science adventures in online, classroom, internet, afterschool and outdoor settings. They have shown high attendance and motivation.”
“I am exploring further education in tandem with the expansion of our programs. I hope to learn from GLOBE partners how to pair research with opportunities to train, publish, teach, and participate in holistic education international exchanges. I want to bring my pedagogy Musical Linguistics™ to other GLOBE partners and families.”
Since New Education Options (NEO) was formed as a nonprofit in 2002, Lebo said she has been helping to develop innovative approaches to education. “In partnership with the Mars 2030 program, which began in 2001, we launched a tour of Greater Los Angeles schools and libraries, which received acknowledgement from Mayor Riordan and wide public support.”
“In 2012 I published a Master’s thesis in Education at California State University San Bernardino, “Musical Linguistics: How music and artistic creativity when delivered as a linguistic practice, help students master academic skills in English language arts.” Under NEO and USDOE, we have produced several videos of our students studying the Los Angeles River, in our Gault Street Elementary Classroom (aerosols and clouds), and in collaboration with the Cleveland High School multimedia journalists working under Evelyn Seubert and James Gleason.”
Lebo said that the connection between California, the United States, and Ireland is being empowered by the presentation of the poster at the 2021 GLOBE Annual Meeting. She said that she hopes the effort will inspire additional collaboration.
STEM Story contributed by Bo Lebo, Los Angeles, California, USA.