Student teachers get their first classroom — full of kids who need one

Little battery-powered bugs zigzag across tables, sending a room of children into fits of laughter. Some marvel at the tiny motors, others cheer when the bugs collide, and all want to know if they'll get to keep their buzzy new creations.

What looks like play is actually science. And for the Cal State Long Beach student teachers leading the lesson, it's also practice.

For two weeks every July, a program called SEE US Succeed! runs a free science and engineering camp for children who are unhoused, in foster care or living in poverty. Laura Henriques, a CSULB professor emeritus of science education, founded the camp as an offshoot of her tuition-based Young Scientists Camp. The latter has been running for 26 summers, the former for 18.

SEE US Succeed! does two jobs at once. For the children, it supplies STEM lessons so many elementary schools no longer have time to teach, at a camp their families otherwise couldn't afford. For credential candidates, it is their first chance to put their classroom skills to use.

"Honestly, that's why we built the camp," Henriques said.

Unlike standard student-teaching programs, SEE US Succeed! (an acronym for Science Education Experience to help Underserved Students Succeed) gives prospective teachers a week to plan lessons, then has them teach while mentor teachers watch and give feedback.

About 60 children enrolled in SEE US Succeed! this summer, and were brought to campus each morning on a Long Beach Unified school bus. Attendance was predictably uneven - 42 or 43  might show up on a typical day - but they got the same experiments and instructors as the roughly 210 kids in the tuition-based camp, and free lunch to boot.

This year, for the first time, the program partnered with the nonprofit Vision To Learn, giving every SEE US Succeed! camper a free eye exam and, for those who needed them, free glasses. In one of the classrooms, eight children left wearing new frames, in colors they picked themselves.

David Sandoval, who earned his teaching credential this year from the College of Education, joined the camp for the same reason many teachers-in-training do: to get comfortable leading a classroom. He also wondered what it would be like to teach children whose lives outside school were often marked by instability.

"The only thing that's been what I expected is the absences," he said. "Some days, one kid will come and he won't come the next day. It's not (been) consistent in that way. But otherwise, it's just been a lot of positives."

It's a good reality check. You learn how to handle it when one or two kids need your attention and you're still teaching everyone else.

He said older students voluntarily helped younger ones, explained experiments to each other and excitedly watched classmates discover things they'd already seen for themselves.

"I've found a more genuine buy-in and joy from the students," Sandoval said. "Once they see it, they're wowed by it and they want to understand how it works."

The pace taught him something too. "It's a good reality check," he said. "You learn how to handle it when one or two kids need your attention and you're still teaching everyone else."

This year, for the first time, Martinez made a visit to the camp. She stayed just long enough to watch the children build and play with their little motorized bugs - and left the room enchanted. 

By the time she reached her car, she'd decided to increase her annual gift.

"This is exactly what my husband would want," she said. "Dan would love this."