As his daughter starts kindergarten, a local dad is hoping to inspire more of Burnaby’s science-y parents to step up and get involved in their kids’ classrooms.
“All kinds of really interesting people are parents,” said Curtis Eickhoff, whose daughter Emily has just started school at Rosser Elementary. “We have people here in our backyard that are scientists that are doing really cool stuff, and if they just took a bit of time to work with some of the teachers locally and went into the classrooms and talked to kids about that, they could inspire generations of kids to do things that they never would have thought of before.”
Eickhoff, an environmental toxicologist, has approached both Rosser and nearby Alpha Secondary about volunteering at the schools as a scientist in residence, collaborating with teachers to engage kids in the process of science through classroom visits, demonstration and fieldtrips during the school year.
He’s modeling the idea on the Vancouver school district’s Scientist in Residence program, started in 2004 by another parent, research scientist Paige Axelrood when her daughter started kindergarten.
The goal is to get scientists with masters and PhD degrees connected to classrooms.
Eickhoff, who has a PhD from SFU, has spent 20 working with industry, helping companies like General Electric, Pfizer to 3M test products to see what effect they have on the environment.
He is currently senior environmental toxicologist at Nautilus Environmental, Burnaby-based biological testing, research and consulting company – and he wants to bring his real-world knowledge of science and the environment into schools.
“I have a pretty good understanding how all of that works,” he said, “and most teachers, they don’t have that kind of practical experience.”
What exactly his involvement will look like will be up to the schools and individual teachers, according to Eickhoff.
He hopes his work will inspire other parents and community members to get involved, as they have in Vancouver, where 22 scientists in residence have stepped up since 2004 and 3,470 elementary school students have participated at 49 schools.
“Science is such an important thing to spark children’s imagination,” Eickhoff said. “Wouldn’t it be great if kids could get inspired to do something by an adult coming into the classroom and bringing something to them they would have never seen otherwise.”
For more information on Vancouver’s Scientist in Residence program, visit scientistinresidence.ca.
