The Scientist in Every Florida School (SEFS) program was started in 2019 with a long-term vision to connect Earth systems scientists with public K-12 schools in Florida and therefore create long-term scientist-teacher partnerships. SEFS fulfills teacher requests to create personalized, meaningful, and impactful experiences to support teacher pedagogy and student learning. As part of our mission, we have a focus on mainstream, particularly Title I, schools and are committed to working with at-risk teachers. The major components of our program include scientist-teacher partnerships, focused professional development workshops on Florida's Earth systems (air, water, land, and life), classroom visits, and other web-based activities. Although still only in its first few years, the project and its more than 600 scientists have a wide reach with over 850 teachers and 53,000 students. Notably, the programs were delivered virtually in the 2020-2021 school year reaching nearly 60% of Florida's 67 counties. In this article, we describe our programmatic features and provide recommendations for others to implement similar programs. One recommendation, which has contributed largely to the program's success, is to invest in outreach coordinators. By doing so, scientists and teachers benefit by having a more streamlined process for classroom visits and teacher workshops.

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AbstractThe extensive sedimentary sequence of Florida preserves evidence of prehistoric life spanning some 40 million years into the past. This paper describes the results of a three-pronged professional development (PD) program conducted in November 2019 in which Florida teachers from eight counties gained knowledge and experience about the process and content of paleontology at an active field research site in northern Florida. Working alongside scientists, 15 elementary, middle, and high school teachers collected 5-million-year-old fossil vertebrates and made scientifically important discoveries that advance understanding of Florida’s prehistoric life. The PD included three components: (1) a pre-trip webinar; (2) a morning tour of our museum exhibits to scaffold teacher’s understanding of the kinds of fossils they would find; and (3) the actual day-long field experience collecting fossils. A post-PD evaluation revealed gains in knowledge about, and experience with, fossils and paleontology. We also found that overall satisfaction with the PD underscored the importance of each of the three components supporting one-another—resulting in a more informative and rewarding learning experience for the participants. Fossils and the science of paleontology are a gateway for STEM learning and this subject and its extensions are applicable to existing standards in earth and life sciences at many grade levels.