Teen Science Café out-of-school programs are a free, fun way for teens to explore the big advances in science and technology affecting their lives. Teens and STEM experts engage in lively conversations and activities to explore a topic deeply.
The TSCN can help you get started now.
What is the Teen Science Café Network?
We are a community of practice providing the highest quality resources and support to organizations who implement a teen science café. Our members are committed to help one another and continually improve the teen science café experiences and their impacts.
Flyers at the high school and middle school seem to be a good way to get the word out. Teachers announcing the Cafes in class and even offering extra credit motivate students to attend. I found that reaching out to the homeschooling community (to the parents through Facebook) has been very good at getting new faces to the Cafes. The greatest motivator, however, seems to be when the Teen Leaders talk a group of their friends into coming.
Through the comment cards we saw that none of the students listed social media as the way they learned about the Cafe, even if they were homeschoolers and their parents found out through FB.
If teachers offer extra credit for attending a TSC event does that make it lose the ‘free choice’ aspect of out-of-school-time learning? Should that be something we as a community of practice should discourage teachers from doing?