University at Buffalo - The State University of New York

Published: May 3, 2007

By MARY COCHRANE
Contributing Editor

As a young professor of education at East Carolina University in Greenville, Randy K. Yerrick received several things to help him bring science and technology into some of the surrounding area's public school classrooms.

Randy Yerrick spent a year as an electroplating chemist, then switched to education. He found his true calling teaching the so-called "lower-track" students.
PHOTO: NANCY J. PARISI

Grant funding from a large corporation? Check. Laptops and video technology to record student findings? Check. A warm welcome from the public schools? Not exactly.

Yerrick, who had spent a year as an electroplating chemist, switched to education in order to bring the wonders of science to more students and quickly found his true calling: teaching the so-called "lower-track" students, or those with "a history of failure due to a whole wide variety of reasons."

"They could be learning disabled, it could be racial basis, it may be linguistic, it could be mathematical, they could be simply violent," Yerrick says. "It's such a heterogeneous group of kids, but they're all labeled for failure in that particular school. Every school has a place in which they put kids with a history of failure. The counselors put them there to 'help them,' 'to give them what they need,' but it's never what they need."

Yerrick, who joined the faculty in UB's Graduate School of Education last fall, insists on bringing technology into the classrooms and, better yet, taking students outside those classrooms to experience science first-hand.

Armed with a grant from Bell South to work in the Greenville public schools, he soon realized he was the first person who was willing to take one school's lower-track students on field trips.

"I took them on four field trips in one semester. I took them to University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to study astronomy. We took water samples from Greenville all the way to the Outer Banks to study biological changes. We went to a lot of different places. And it cost the district nothing. I paid for the buses; I paid for everything. And they (the school administrators) still said these kids were missing too much school. These are kids who are labeled failures anyway, right? So we can't have too much privilege for them. They said I was going to have to cut back on taking these kids off campus."

Soon after, the school planned its own field trip for the students: to the county jail.

"The message was, because of your behavior, because of your choices, you better straighten up or your future is at the jail," Yerrick says. "The students were broken-hearted."

Associate dean for educational technology and professor in the Department of Learning and Instruction, Yerrick holds three degrees from Michigan State University: a bachelor's in chemistry, with a double minor in mathematics and physics; a master's in curriculum and instruction; and a doctorate in teaching, policy and practice, with a specialty in science education.

He says he's never regretted his decision to enter teaching, and chose to come to UB because of the opportunities to work with graduate students in the Buffalo Public Schools and in the Clarence Central School District, where his two sons are enrolled.

"I've been in my boys' schools, teaching science every week for an hour since they were in preschool and they are now teenagers. I'll take my two loads of laptops into the school and within 15 minutes, we'll have an entire wireless lab up and running. We'll actually do data collection or edit live video, all kinds of things we'll do at the drop of a hat, thanks to resources that grants provide," Yerrick says

He also uses iMovie to film classroom instruction, field trip discoveries and teachers' discussions about how best to open up the world of science to their students. His office walls are lined with tapes, DVDs and CDs of his work from East Carolina University and San Diego State University, where he taught from 1999 through last year.

His only requirements for the projects he takes on are that the teacher and school ask him because they want true change in their science curriculum and that the teacher participates on an equal basis with him in and outside the classroom.

"There's a professional development that occurs for the teacher. Teachers see different things in their classrooms when they're allowed to step back and watch their students as learners as opposed to being the manager in front of the class," he says. "You do it in places where there's need, but also where you have relationships with people who really want to do it differently. I don't partner with people because they say 'I need to do an in-service with my teachers.' I work with the people who say 'I really want change and I want to think about things differently.'"

Yerrick firmly believes in reform mandates that call for "science for all children," but he also believes in being on-site to ensure that happens.

"You can't come in and visit from the outside, and ask 'How are you doing' and then go back to your university because the change that needs to occur for kids who are struggling doesn't occur haphazardly. It doesn't occur because of a new curriculum; it doesn't occur because you put technology in front of them. It occurs because you change the culture and the discourse of what the students are engaged in doing in the classroom. I'm all about changing the culture of the classroom around which to advance kids' thinking and kids' voices to make science better. You can't do this kind of work from your office. You can't do this kind of work while writing a book."

Yerrick's work has earned him much attention nationally, including the prestigious National Association for Research in Science Teaching's Most Outstanding Research award in 2001 for his article in the Journal of Research in Science Teaching, "Same School, Separate Worlds: A Sociocultural Study of Identity, Resistance and Negotiation in a Rural, Lower Track Science Classroom," co-written with his graduate student on the project, Andrew Gilbert.

And since 1999, Yerrick has been named an Apple Distinguished Educator annually for his use of technology in the teaching of science. But he's the first to tell you he is in it for the students, not the accolades.

"The gap between genders is shrinking—there are more girls in science—but for the underrepresented students in science—Latinas, African Americans, Native Americans—the gap is growing," he says. "It has changed my life to be able to work with so many great teachers and so many kids who are so receptive and so willing to learn. I don't care how tough their backgrounds are; these are wonderful kids. And they are underrepresented in science and the only thing they had in common was failure."