This year, Washington Sea Grant and DO-IT partnered – both groups are DO-IT students and WA Sea Grant provided content for the DO-IT Scholars program. DO-IT’s NNL provides hands-on experiences in neuroscience disciplines, networking opportunities and resources to high school and early postsecondary students identified as “neurodiverse” learners.
Washington Sea Grant typically offers NOAA Science Camp, a summer program that takes place each July to offer hands-on science learning opportunities for middle and high school students, as well as other programming for K-12 students and the public.
Interviewees:
Maile Sullivan (she/her) – WA Sea Grant, Education Coordinator. Maile’s goal is translating science and research about ocean & coastal systems to a broader audience, with hope it can be used by the community. Maile focuses on K-12 outreach, including NOAA Science Camp and Orca Bowl. Both programs have been on hiatus due to COVID, which has opened up creative new opportunities like this partnership. Fun fact, Maile started as a student assistant (“an Anita”) in 2006!
Tami Tidwell (she/her) – DO-IT, Program Director. Tami wears many hats: she directs the DO-IT Scholars program (a year-round, multi-year program with a summer session) and the Neuroscience for Neurodiverse Learners program (primarily a summer, multi-year program with some school-year elements). This is Tami’s 20th year at UW!
Anita Wray (she/her) – Education Student Assistant at WA Sea Grant. Anita is currently completing her Masters in Aquatic & Fisheries Sciences and facilitated most of the NOAA/DO-IT summer program 2021 and 2022. She is “Maile’s right (and left!) hand woman.”
Piper Hawley (they/them) – Program Assistant at DO-IT. Piper is a sophomore at Western Washington University, focusing on neuroscience with an intention to one day pursue a PhD. They work on multiple projects with Tami. Piper was an NNL participant in 2020, before becoming a peer leader in 2021 and finally staff in 2022.
The unique partnership between DO-IT NNL and Washington Sea Grant has allowed for both programs to reveal both the great benefits and challenges of integrating the two programs for their students.
DO-IT is a cohorted program with around 17-20 Scholars each year joining the DO-IT Scholars Program. Students are invited to return annually until they leave for college and are then invited to come back as mentors and/or leaders for the new cohorts. Around 65 DO-IT Scholars (Scholars and mentors) and 30 NNL students participated in the summer of 2022.
As for WA Sea grant, NOAA Science Camp had been seeing about 120 students per summer participating in their 2 week program. Since 2020 and pandemic pivots to their new programming, NOAA’s attendees has skyrocketed to over 600 participants who join through webinars. Their new hybrid model allows for more students not from the immediate area to participate and not be as geographically dependent with their programming. Another strategy, as see, is to branch out and partner with other programs!
From Friendship to Partnership
How did this partnership come to be?
“It was the perfect storm of COVID that created a gap that allowed for this partnership to happen” we gained some amazing experiences from it, as well as the youth who hopefully benefitted from the programs partnering.” – Anita
Tami and Maile partnered because of their existing friendship from the Summer Programs Planning (SPP) meetings hosted by OYPC and participation on the Summer Programs Planning steering committee. During the SPP meetings, Tami and Maile had a very general idea of what one another did in their positions, but hadn’t explored what kind of partnership could be possible.
Tami and Maile highlighted the long process of “recreating” their programs and the process of bringing in new ideas while reworking old models because of the pandemic. After summer 2021 programming, it became clear that reaching out to peer programs would help bring new perspective and structure to the future of youth programming.
DO-IT knew they had to pivot to online work – one of their partners (Rooted in Rights) was ready to go virtual while other partners were bowing out. During the brainstorming process of programming, Maile and Tami completed one another with Maile saying “I need to do programming” (“I have the scientists!”) and Tami saying “I need to plug in programming” (“I need the scientists!”).
The opportunity to work with one another was special and new for both the students and staff. Maile and Tami have learned from each other’s programs and have learned how to look at their own programs with a different perspective while incorporating new ideas that might have never been possible before without this partnership.
“There’s never going to be a moment where you have 20 students of different disabilities, so that opportunity is a unique one – and being able to spend as much time – as Maile got to spend time with the students – is so unique. It allows you to learn and change and evolve in a way that is hard to do theoretically, but it does change your program forever.” – Tami
WA Sea Grant and DO-IT have shared their expertise to help grow and better their programs so students can feel welcomed and comfortable.
The Future of Partnerships for the Youth at UW Community
What’s next for these two programs? With the success of this partnership, we wonder if this will evolve into something more, or will it continue in the same format as this year.
“If you would have asked us 3 years ago that we were going to be doing 3 summers online, we would think you were out of your mind, so we just don’t know what next year is going to look like. We will hopefully continue working together in the same similar format, but if it is not, I hope that we will continue to offer programming from WA Sea Grant and I know that will stay the same, in one shape or form.” – Tami
WA Sea Grant and DO-IT have adapted for 3 years to make sure their students are receiving the best programming and access to resources to make for an engaging and exciting summer. Without knowing what the future holds, programming has been difficult to predict, but with diligent planning and experience in adapting to the unknown, the possibilities to create something new to strengthen programming year after year remains achievable.
“We will be keeping an eye out for opportunities that are presented to us knowing that we have some capacity to partner at this level of programming and we just have to make it work for whatever scenario we are in…the spirit to continue to work together is there for sure. We would love to continue to partner [with DO-IT] and what that looks like is a big question mark with what the future holds.” – Maile
Tami replies to this sentiment about the hopes of continuing this thriving partnership, saying, “We will hopefully continue working together in the same similar format, but if its not, I hope that we will continue to offer programming from WA Sea Grant and I know that will stay the same, in one shape or form.”
Collaborating with Fellow Programs
WA Sea Grant and DO-IT are great examples and inspiration for us in the Youth at UW Network to to use one another as a resource and to collaborate as a team to accomplish new visions and goals. We wonder how OYPC and program directors can encourage one another to think creatively and create these opportunities for themselves. Maile explained that right now funders seem to be more open to different “deliverables” and that “as long as you’re serving relatively the same audience (serving youth and having aligned missions)…go for it!”
These partnerships are born when that “nudge” and the question of “what could be done and created” comes along. Incentives are big and finding the right connecting points to match with another program can help with creating a foundation to a partnership. Some incentives include a shared target audience, shared content goals (STEM, Sports, etc.), shared programming venue or location and even shared transportation needs.
During the OYPC SPP meetings – directors see the amazing programs other directors run, but it’s hard to see how you, specifically, may fit into that. When we, as a community, allow for conversation, friendship and curiosity to form among our network, we begin to dream together about the possible programming that our youth can experience.
“If nothing else, what we would like to take from this experience is sort of the lessons that we have learned around developing and operating programming to a very diverse audience of learners – how can we implement that in our own programming? Certainly when we are back in the field of NOAA science camp I know at a minimum that I have Tami and DO-IT as a resource to figure out what we need to do to shift our programming so that it can be more accessible in addition to hopefully continuing partnering in programming.” – Maile
Collaborating with Students
We have focused on how programs can collaborate amongst each other to build new programming and strengthen their current ones. OYPC experienced, first hand, the impact of Anita and Piper, as student employees, on their programs.
How can programs utilize student employees, interns, and student volunteers to help evolve the mentorship and peer model aspect that allows many of these youth programs to thrive?
Piper’s and Anita’s enthusiasm for youth programming shines through their teaching model and interactions with students. It is obvious that these two are dedicated to educating the youth and helping the future generations learn and grow within the subjects they are, too, so passionate about. Not only do Piper and Anita support programming and teaching behind the scenes, but they also lead activities and exercises during the session making students feel more comfortable engaging with the class. By being both peers and facilitators, Piper and Anita help move conversation and discussion along by monitoring the chat box, reacting vocally or through Zoom icons, and always giving the appropriate time and space for students to react with their own thoughts.
Anita and Piper have had a great impact on the students and the program directors. Both students heavily support Maile and Tami, bringing in their strengths and expertise to continuously help improve and evolve what is already being done. With their different perspectives, it’s allowed for the two programs to even have this partnership to begin with! For example, Anita’s background and previous experience working in camps allowed Tami and Maile to move forward with developing new programming with confidence.
“My favorite part is when you’re developing a lesson and you finally see the excitement and you see it click with the students – it’s harder in a virtual space to get that – but when on the day OYPC came and observed, you see students mouths drop and faces come closer to the screen, those tiny little moments were so exciting because it showed that students were staying engaged and, on the teacher’s end, a check that we did it! We created something that was engaging, students were involved and they were excited about it!” – Anita
As the program assistant for DO-IT NNL, and also being a former program participant, Piper is able to relate and model to students during their sessions. Piper is currently working on a writing piece that highlights how folks are able to phrase questions in sessions and interact with people with disabilities – a testament to the impact of bringing students to the staffing team. Program leadership and staff learn from student employees just as much as they learn from them!
“I’ve learned a lot from the students and getting to build that connection is really rewarding…One thing I’ve found great about online programming is that we can do a lot of the behind the scenes work quietly and not as intrusive to the students – in person, you have to try really hard to make it seem like you aren’t working in a million directions all at once because you want the students to have a good time. Working with my team, everyone can seamlessly hop in and change roles. We connect well together and the DO-IT staff allows us to be flexible, it’s one of my favorite things about my job” – Piper
Learning from the Students
Youth programming is all about the students. The hard work that program directors and program staff members put into their sessions is to make sure their youth are receiving the education and fun they deserve over the summer.
While it may seem more obvious that youth are the ones learning from us during these sessions, we realize that we can learn greatly from our youth as well.
Tami shares with us what she has learned from youth through DO-IT scholars, saying, “They may be youth, but they are future adults. They have so much potential and something to contribute… It’s easy to make assumptions [during virtual sessions] – like that a camera off means someone isn’t engaged – but 9/10 times that’s not true. Everyone’s a human. If we give people the benefit of the doubt, they tend to live up to that.”
Maile’s job as a hands-on science educator has had many challenges since adjusting due to COVID. Since recreating NOAA Science Camp, she’s had to learn what engagement looks like within her sessions and how to adapt to the new circumstances. This was a really good lesson for engaging with the public at WA Sea Grant, “you never know how they learn, where they’re coming from… but teaching is often really prescribed. Re-learning what engagement can look like when you connect in a new and different way.”
Whether we are on the beach learning about the rocky intertidal zone over Zoom, or in a Zoom call learning about how to prepare for college – how we choose to engage with each other does not have to interfere with what we are learning.
The teams behind WA Sea Grant and DO-IT have shown us the possibilities that can come out of persevering to push the boundaries of youth programming. By partnering together to provide new and meaningful content for students, the two programs are carving out a new path for programs to find opportunities to pursue together.
A BIG THANK YOU to the WA Sea Grant and DO-IT team for taking the time out of their busy lives to share their stories with all of us as a part of Youth at UW! We thank them for continuing to be role models for all us pursuing the mission of developing strong, high quality programming through education and conversation.