Biochemistry and organic chemistry allow us to answer many of the most important questions about the world.
Why Biochemistry Literacy?
Biochemistry and organic chemistry allow us to answer many of the most important questions about the world. What are everyday materials made of? Why do they have different properties? What are living things made of? How does life work? These are the kinds of questions that every young person wants answers to.
Unfortunately, conventional K-12 curriculum does not really begin to answer them, and even a bachelor’s degree in biology or chemistry only scratches the surface of these subjects.
By the time many students reach young adulthood, their curiosity about science has faded, and is replaced by fear and a desire to “just pass the course”.
Conventional K-12 curriculum neglects authentic in-depth science learning in the first years of formal education, resulting in the loss of countless potential scientists, engineers, and doctors, and obscures the subject from non-scientists.
Our unique educational philosophy allows students to succeed in biochemistry over a decade earlier in life than with conventional curriculum.
The current Biochemistry Literacy for Kids objective is to train other educators with our curriculum materials and methods, so that many more students can receive our unique programming.
We want to show the world the true potential of young learners, and to give more students the kind of unprecedented, life-changing learning opportunities that our curriculum provides.
What Makes Our Method Different?
How do we teach college-level science to young kids?
College-level learning: The very fact that we teach college-level material to kids is itself part of what makes the student’s high achievement possible. Kids want to feel like they are being treated as competent learners.
When they know that they are learning college science we see an immediate boost in their attention, enthusiasm, and confidence, and they work hard to reach our learning expectations.
Selective focus: Our presentation slides are the core of our classes. We have developed thousands of custom animated slides and visualizations to clarify concepts that are difficult to learn from books. By animating selected parts of an image, students can focus more easily on differences, similarities, and patterns between things are otherwise hard to notice.
By painstakingly developing our visual aids, we can drastically reduce the amount of mental work required by students, resulting in very rapid progress through the material.
Modeling: Students build and use molecular models in every class, allowing them to assemble and observe the chemical structures as they learn. Molecular models are the ultimate scientific toy, allowing them to understand the properties of biomolecules and encourages them to build and create new structures on their own.
We also use cutting edge computer modeling software to make complex biochemical structures comprehensible for even young students.
Active learning and the ability to improvise, theorize, and ask questions is probably what keeps the kids coming back class after class.
Multiple pedagogies: We aren’t just scientists, we’re also artists and musicians. Our teaching methods are inspired in part by teaching heritages from art and music, creating unique learning environments. Our approach reaches students with widely divergent learning styles and strengths. students with widely divergent learning styles and strengths.
Often, it is not just the students who are strong in math and science who rise to the top of our classes, but also visual learners, or students who best learn non-verbally.
Content: Perhaps our curriculum’s greatest strength is simply how captivating and fun it is for students to learn. Science is advancing at an ever-increasing pace, and our curriculum includes advanced, cutting-edge concepts and discoveries from just the last few years.
This allows students to gain the deep insight into the world that they want—and deserve.