Bulletin Board

This article is part of our latest Learning special report. We’re focusing on Generation Z, which is facing challenges from changing curriculums and new technology to financial aid gaps and homelessness.

Biochemistry Can Be Elementary

Students generally learn about moles, atoms, compounds and the intricacies of the periodic table in college, but Daniel Fried is convinced that children can learn complex biochemistry topics as early as elementary school.

Mr. Fried is an assistant professor of chemistry at St. Peter’s University in New Jersey, and in his spare time he creates biochemistry lessons for youngsters, teaching fourth through sixth graders at a nearby Montessori school and sharing lessons with other teachers and home-schooling parents around the world.

“When the kids are young, they’re highly motivated,” Mr. Fried said. “It’s easy to teach them. They pick up on the patterns so quickly. They appreciate everything.” High school and college students, by contrast, take a lot more work to engage and tend to want to learn only what they need to pass a test, he said.

Mr. Fried has found getting children interested in biochemistry to be a breeze — especially when they hear they will soon be able to correct older siblings or cousins. “The harder part is getting the adults on board to allow it to happen,” he said.

At Hopatcong Middle School in northern New Jersey, Jim McKowen is one of the first public school teachers to take on this curriculum. He teaches it to sixth graders. After a lesson where students learn about flavor molecules, Mr. McKowen said, students go home and scour ingredient labels for chemicals they recognize. Children doodle molecules in their school notebooks after his class, he said.

Mr. Fried has introduced biochemistry to students of various ethnic and socioeconomic groups in schools and museums, finding that all of them happily grapple with the curriculum. Girls are as interested in these lessons as boys, he said, although men tend to dominate STEM fields.

Both teachers think the curriculum could bring more diversity to STEM. “Hopefully it does translate into a greater interest in science later in life and we start to see those results,” Mr. McKowen said.

To get there, though, teachers have to believe children are capable of more than they may think.

“We do sell kids short sometimes,” Mr. McKowen said. TARA GARCÍA MATHEWSON

The Frogs Are Fake. The Lessons Are Real.

Dissection day always made Karina Frey queasy. Even though she called herself a “science and math girl,” she did not like the idea of cutting into a chemically preserved animal.

“I believe that animals have souls, too,” said Karina, a senior at J.W. Mitchell High School in New Port Richey, Fla.

With vegetarianism and environmental concerns on the rise among young people, the option of learning on something that did not have to die for that purpose is increasingly attractive.

Enter SynFrog: an amphibian that is as slimy as a real frog but has never drawn a breath.

The anatomically accurate fake frog made its debut at Karina’s high school in November. It met with avid approval from biology teachers and students, according to the school’s principal, Jessica Schultz. The school usually goes through about 300 frogs a year, she said, and several students in each class always opt out of the assignment.

Three million frogs are harvested each year for classroom dissections in the United States, according to People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, which partnered with the manufacturing company SynDaver to develop the synthetic frog.

At $150, the first SynFrog was more expensive than a frog carcass ($7 to $10 each); the company hopes to reduce the price in the next version. As the frog is reusable for most dissections, the cost could be recouped over time.

Since the frog’s debut, the company has had trouble filling orders fast enough, according to its chief executive and founder, Christopher Sakezles. If SynFrog catches on, it could change a staple of high school education. MEREDITH KOLODNER

Students Like Tech, but Also Teachers

Children like technology. They like playing games, watching videos, finding music and interacting with their peers on social media. They like exploring the endless resources of the internet.

Educators notice this and assume that computers and other devices will capture students’ interest in school.

Ninety-three percent of principals and 86 percent of teachers say that increased student engagement is the most important benefit of using computers and tablets in classrooms, according to the latest data from the Speak Up Research Initiative, which surveyed more than 26,000 teachers and librarians and almost 2,200 administrators last year.

Nearly 70 percent of district administrators said they considered engagement to be the most effective sign that a piece of educational technology is useful.

Speak Up got a very different response from the roughly 290,000 students it surveyed: Just 41 percent of middle school students and 35 percent of high school students said they strongly associated classroom technology with increased engagement.

What is more, anecdotal interviews, along with data from YouthTruth, a national nonprofit that conducts student surveys, indicate that many students actually dislike when teachers turn over instruction to computers. They say they prefer learning directly from teachers — because they think teachers are the experts or that it’s their job — and many complain about spending too much time on screens, between their schoolwork and their use of technology at home.

Gen Z may walk through life glued to smartphones, but that does not mean they want to use computers in class. TARA GARCÍA MATHEWSON

A Work College Makes Room for Growth

With the average cost of college now about $20,000 annually at public and $41,000 at private institutions, many students have jobs to help cover costs. But at nine institutions federally designated as work colleges, working is incorporated into the curriculum to offset tuition and fees. Paul Quinn College, a historically black college in Dallas, became the newest work college in 2017, and the only urban one. Now, it is expanding.

“We’re not one of those schools that’s overstaffed,” said Michael Sorrell, the college’s president. “A lot of the jobs that other schools might hire people to do, we’ve invested in the students to do.”

Classes are primarily held Monday, Wednesday and Friday, leaving Tuesday and Thursday for students to work uninterrupted. They work in the president’s office, on the campus farm (where they grow radishes, arugula, spinach, kohlrabi and more) and off campus at businesses such as JP Morgan Chase and Liberty Mutual.

The model clearly works well for Paul Quinn. The retention rate for first-year, full-time students rose to 71 percent in the 2017-18 year from 63 percent before the change. Two buildings are scheduled to open this summer so enrollment can grow beyond the roughly 500 students it has now. One is a residence hall, the other a gym and wellness center with classroom space.

And, having added a new campus in nearby Plano in 2018, school leaders are searching for the next site. “I think you will see another campus within the next three years,” Mr. Sorrell said. DELECE SMITH-BARROW

Out: Rows of Desks. In: Flexible Design.

School desks neatly lined up in rows may soon be a relic. Districts across the country are pouring millions of dollars into redesigning classrooms, trading the traditional layout for beanbags, rocking chairs and furniture on wheels. The North American school furniture market is expected to grow to $2.4 billion by 2024 from $1.7 billion in 2018 as technology-driven change increases the demand for more flexible classroom space.

Bryan Ballegeer of KI, a Wisconsin-based school furniture company, says school administrators tell him: “We’ve been sitting in the same chairs for 40 years, and our school system is changing. We don’t want any one part of the room to be the front of the room. We want our kids to collaborate more.”

In response, KI eliminated some of its desk/chair combos. Its catalog now includes standing or counter-height tables where students can work in teams and couches where they can settle in to read.

To figure out if its furniture helped learning, KI redesigned some classrooms in nine schools and gave a before-and-after survey to students and teachers. Both groups reported higher levels of engagement and participation after the furniture swap. Other research backs up the idea that changing a classroom’s physical characteristics can change what happens in it and improve student performance.

Still, Mr. Ballegeer, a former educator, offered a cautionary note.

“My advice is take a moment, talk with your teachers, talk with your community,” he said. “It’s a big expense.” SARAH BUTRYMOWICZ

Bulletin Board was produced with The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit independent news organization covering education.