CRS is a fantastic organization. They help coordinate graduate students in my department to run science lessons with elementary students. I love sharing cool things about science with kids -- it's always such a joy to see them discover something new and get excited about the field I love. We wouldn't be able to reach so many students without CRS!
A bunch of graduate student researchers at my University have a heart for helping education in our community, but our hectic schedules prevent us from connecting to and organizing with underserved schools. CRS has connected us to teachers and students hungering to learn which we would've been unable to find otherwise. These visits remind me why I'm pursuing education in the first place and what we hope to accomplish as a University: it's all about helping these kids. It's refreshing to break from the rat-race of paper publication to see tangible results of helping. CRS empowers us to do that.
I've been volunteering with CRS for the past 3 years through BASIS, and it's been a wonderful and fulfilling experience! Our short lessons encourage students to explore and discover, and there is always a feeling on genuine excitement and interest in the lessons. I've received numerous thank you cards from students, and teachers have gone out of there way to tell us how much their class enjoyed the lesson. I believe volunteers like me and my colleagues help break stereotypes about who can be a scientist and what scientists do. All of this is possible due to the wonderful organization of CRS that helps provide resources for our lessons and coordinate between volunteers and teachers.
I have taught with CRS's BASIS program for two years now, and recently joined the Steering Committee for that program. I have been continually impressed with its impact. The joy and inspiration in the faces of the young students to whom we teach science is great. Furthermore, the elementary school teachers whose classes we teach often take the time to tell us how important the lessons are for their students. CRS is an invaluable important part of the Bay Area science education community, and I look forward to continuing to work with them!
My friends and I just started volunteering with CRS under their BASIS program and are thrilled to be contributing to science education in local schools! The BASIS program manager and other staff we've interacted with have all been very helpful, responsive, and above all passionate about the work being done.
They provide excellent support for volunteers and students in the Berkeley community. Scheduling and communication is very easy and accommodating.
I started volunteering for the Community Resources for Science organization, as part of the Bay Area Scientists in Schools (BASIS) program 2 years ago. After shadowing a few lessons with the BASIS program coordinator, I was able to form my own team and became a BASIS team leader. My team and I have been teaching science lessons to third graders for a year and a half now and it has been an extraordinary experience. The CRS has been incredibly resourceful in providing materials and support for our BASIS team and in coordinating the lessons with the teachers in schools all over the Bay Area. Top-tier organization and interest in the success of their programs and of the students that the programs serve are some of the greatest assets of the CRS. This is most definitely an outstanding organization that continues to promote Science education and to incorporate the community in this promotion of Science.
I got involved with the CRS by participating in their BASIS program two and a half years ago. As a first year graduate student at UC Berkeley, I was looking for opportunities where I could get involved with the local communities and schools in ways that would allow me to share science. BASIS has been an amazing opportunity to expand my horizons as a scientist, to teach young students, and to help teachers make science fun and accesible. I enjoyed it so much that I decided to join their Steering Committee in order to recruit more graduate students to form teams and visit our schools! My graduate experience has been very enjoyable with BASIS. I am excited for what the next years of research and teaching will bring!
I have been volunteering with CRS for more than three years now and have volunteered in many classrooms around the San Francisco Bay Area. It's amazing to see the large impact that we can have on students' perceptions of science and scientists in just one hour, and this happens in over 500 classrooms a year. I'm really proud to be a part of this program and hope that we can continue to reach more and more students over the next few years during which I will be participating.
I have been volunteering with CRS through their BASIS (Bay Area Scientists in Schools) and BAS (Be A Scientist) programs for the past few years and I think that it is super special resource for kids in the area. CRS has a great connection with the east bay schools so it makes it possible for scientists to be able to have a direct pathway to interact with the students. I have enjoyed working with the students and its really rewarding when kids ask questions about science and become genuinely interested. I think that CRS is a great model that all communities should strive for. It would be great if all schools around the country could follow this model and provide access to science education for kids. I see the value in the programs that CRS offers because I didn't have great science exposure growing up until I did a research internship at a nearby university when I was in high school which inspired me to pursue science. Without that exposure, I don't think I would be a scientist today, so it is really important for students to be able to see what science is at an early age!
Awesome organization! Everyone is super involved and excited! They do science outreach on so many levels and in different ways. I took part in several programs and always left feeling great and like I had really made the most of that time.
CRS is such an amazing organization. The team is extremely flexible and supportive and is able to provide real impact to elementary school students in an unbiased way. I've been teaching a hands-on science class on microorganisms to 4th and 5th graders once a month for more than a year and it's been fantastic!
What I love about their BASIS program:
1) It provides science education to all students regardless of socioeconomic situation because lessons occur during regular school periods
2) Lessons are engaging and focus on scientific thinking rather than memorization - lessons are always hands on and emphasize hypotheses and the scientific method
3) Scheduling is flexible and the CRS team is supportive (I'm a strategy consultant with a very unpredictable schedule; CRS has been great about helping me find times to volunteer around my busy periods)
CRS is an amazing resource!! Three Berkeley PHD students visited my 4th grade class yesterday and gave a fun eye-opening demonstration on electricity, magnetism and motion. They had supplies for every student to try the concepts hands-on, at each of three stations. The students loved it!
Often science gets lost in upper elementary education because of the challenging pacing guides in Language arts and math, and CRS brings engaging lessons with exciting teachers into the schools! And at no extra cost to the school!
Do you think science is important? This is my favorite nonprofit because it's such a huge win/win/win. K-5 teachers win because they get support in teaching a subject that many of them were never trained to teach. K-8 students win because they meet young, ethnically diverse scientists who come to the classroom to do hands-on science which is deeply engaging and can inspire them to think of science as a career. Young scientists win because they get training on how to bring their passion to a general audience. What is not to totally love about bringing over 650 scientists into classrooms each year, supporting 1,750 teachers, and improving science instruction for 43,000 elementary and middle school students, all for a budget of under $500,000.
