Out Teach

Research across many fields shows the importance of early life experiences on adult interests and success, and the diversity of the STEM workforce is no different.  For students, the quality of their teacher and their classroom instruction are the most significant in-school factors in determining early academic success. This speaks to the impact that the current state of elementary science instruction has on all young students.

Gender equity in STEM can be traced back to elementary school instruction in general, where only 1/3 of teachers report feeling prepared to teach science, resulting in an average of only 18 minutes of science instruction per day and a general lack of academic achievement in science as a subject. 

This overall lack of elementary science instruction is exacerbated by other factors that have traditionally impacted girls, such as the effects of societal beliefs and the learning environment on girls’ achievements and interest in science and math. Research from 2016from the Intercultural Development Research Association highlighting the findings of studies on girls and STEM stated that research points to several indicators that are thought to be correlated to the low number of women and minorities in STEM, specifically in mathematics and science. Differential encouragement from teachers, cultural stereotypes of the professions, and lack of gender-equitable teaching practices are among influences that can severely dissuade young women from pursuing careers in science and mathematics (Diekman, et al., 2010).

Current educational practices also heavily influence the low participation of females of color in STEM occupations due to opportunity and achievement gaps and lack of support. While the National Science Foundation reports an uptick in women entering the STEM field, women of color, particularly African Americans and Latinas, compose a minute percentage of those working in STEM-related professions, comprising only 2% of all scientists and engineers working in science and engineering occupations

 These are the problems that Out Teach specifically addresses: a lack of high-quality science instruction delivered using gender-equitable and culturally-responsive teaching practices for girls of color at a critical time for cultivating interest and confidence in science as a life and career pursuit. 

Out Teach addresses the lack of high-quality, gender-inclusive elementary science instruction by ensuring that teachers have the knowledge, skills and mindset to more effectively teach science using a student-centered instructional approach and gender-inclusive curricular resources that set girls of color on a path to academic and professional achievement in STEM. 

Typically serving under-resourced, Title I elementary schools, the Out Teach solution is driven by two primary programs: the creation of Outdoor Learning Labs and Teacher Training.

 Outdoor Learning Labs

Out Teach excites students by bringing science to life through real-world hands-on lessons in Outdoor Learning Labs. This is especially relevant to engaging young girls in STEM.  Research from the University of Indiana shows that playing or spending time outdoors is the number one way girls’ interest in STEM is first sparked.

The Labs are designed by our landscape architects in close collaboration with the entire school community. They contain a classroom space and learning stations for earth and life sciences, math, and other STEM activities. Faculty and students provide input on the customizable design and can select from a menu of stations based upon their individual school’s academic priorities and standards requirements. 

Teacher Training

Out Teach believes that with the right support and tools, every teacher can find new confidence, creativity, and excitement in their jobs that can translate to more effective science instruction for girls.  Our comprehensive program for teachers includes year-long coaching by master teachers and a free online hub of lesson plans, each containing elements to focus on gender-equity.  Demographic data from our most recent orientation surveys shows that nearly 70% of the educators we are training this school year are teachers of color, primarily African American and Latinx, which is representative of our students. This gives students the opportunity to connect with science teachers who look like them.

Out Teach executes both of these strategies by partnering with districts on systemic interventions, including the design of 60+ Outdoor Learning Labs for future construction with District of Columbia Public Schools, grade-level coaching for all science specialists in Dallas ISD and Atlanta Public Schools, and innovative partnerships with Mecklenburg County to annually develop resources for Charlotte Mecklenburg Schools. 

What Does a Scientist Look Like?

To help girls of color envision themselves as future scientists, Out Teach has integrated the IF/THEN® Collection, a free digital asset library sponsored by Lyda Hill Philanthropies that profiles a racially diverse group of women working in STEM known as “Ambassadors,” into both our teacher training and lesson plans.  Examples of how we do this include hosting virtual Q&A’s with teachers during Professional Learning Community sessions and integrating IF/THEN® themes and collateral materials in features within our Outdoor Learning Labs. 

Currently, Out Teach provides teacher training and outdoor learning spaces to low-income elementary schools in urban centers in five states – Texas, Georgia, North Carolina, Maryland, and Virginia – and the District of Columbia. Typically, more than 75-90+% of the children who attend these schools are economically disadvantaged children of color and the student bodies are approximately 50% female. Nearly 70% of the educators we are working with this academic year are teachers of color. 

Out Teach implements our teacher training program via a team of Instructional Coaches. Our Coaches are all former teachers and work one-on-one with educators. This close working relationship gives us the opportunity to learn the obstacles to effective and engaging science education that teachers face, develop solutions to overcome them, and build personal bonds. For example, more than two-thirds of teachers feel unprepared to teach science and face multiple barriers to traditional professional development. Thus, our program focuses on building science knowledge and increasing teachers’ confidence in addition to coaching them on how to effectively teach it outdoors via a job-embedded model that makes it easy for teachers to develop their skills. Survey results show that our instructional program does more than increase teachers’ ability to teach science outdoors, it also boosts job satisfaction, which can impact retention, keeping high quality educators available for students who need them the most.

Teachers are also directly involved in the construction of the Outdoor Learning Lab at their school. During an afterschool Design & Dine event hosted by Out Teach, teachers engage in the planning process for the Lab. The event begins by honoring the students who won the Student Design Challenge, a competition that engages the whole school body by asking students to draw a picture of their ideal Outdoor Learning Lab. After the three Challenge winners share their designs with the attendees, Out Teach’s Project Manager leads teachers through several exercises to demonstrate how impactful outdoor learning can be. Everyone then tours the site of the future Learning Lab. Afterwards, teachers share their ideas in small groups and are then asked to draw their vision of what an Outdoor Learning Lab could look like while envisioning how they will use the space.  

Out Teach programs put the communities we serve at the heart of our program design. Each school partnership is created as a custom solution for the community. We work with school leaders and administrators, PTO’s and community-support organizations to identify areas of need and improvement for campus science instruction, and we tailor Outdoor Learning Labs and instructional coaching to meet these areas. These include not only formal science, but also the integration of other core subject areas, socio-emotional learning, etc.  Reflection and modification on these goals continues throughout the year-long partnership works collaboratively to ensure our work remains relevant to the needs of the community.

At the individual student level, we are guided by the use of Culturally Responsive and Sustaining Pedagogy to recognize student input and ideas and to prioritized students’ personal and cultural references in all aspects of learning.  By activating students’ prior knowledge and making learning contextual, we encourage students to leverage their cultural capital and build relationships based on respect for diversity within these principles, creating classrooms that evolve into places of equity based upon the diverse strengths and values of its students.

In additional to the proximity of our Team Lead in serving communities described below, all of Out Teach’s professional learning staff are former teachers who spent 10+ years working in the communities they serve with Out Teach under the direction of Teena Hine, Out Teach Director of Professional Learning.  Teena has served diverse and disadvantaged students for 20 years. She grew up like many of the students she serves, and often used her backyard as an accessible resource to invent and investigate.  As an inspiration for her future, this childhood fueled an inquisitiveness that led her to become a first-generation college graduate and a role in leading school support programs in outdoor Science education and STEM.  Serving students across the state of West Virginia as a state Technology Coordinator, she worked with local school systems to advance equitable access in learning experiences for students in remote areas.  

During the 2021-22 academic year, Out Teach engaged 55,725 elementary school students in real-world learning outdoors in 88 communities in Texas, Georgia, North Carolina, Maryland, Virginia, and the District of Columbia.  

Out Teach is excited about the opportunity to participate in the 6-month Support Program. To reach more educators and students, we have invested in developing an innovative digital program delivery method that will allow us to reach significantly more teachers and girls of color at low-income schools, including those in rural areas.

 This Digital Professional Learning Program is being developed in collaboration with district partners, school administrators, and educators, and consists of a variety of digital learning opportunities such as 1:1 coaching, self-paced professional development modules and peer-to-peer learning and collaboration spaces.

As a new initiative, participation in the Support Program will greatly benefit our development of the business model, marketing strategies for districts outside of our current markets, the selection and development of specific technologies and plans for scaling.  

Out Teach CEO Jeanne McCarty has life experiences and a professional background that helped imagine programs focused on real-world learning outdoors and an interdisciplinary approach to Science and STEM. Her vision features students moving from indoors to outdoors throughout the school day, and knows that it must work in underserved schools to propel STEM learning for girls and students of color to enrich a professional field that lacks diversity.

Jeanne grew up in southern Mississippi in a family of teachers. She spent hours exploring and studying the natural world, living in her dad’s garden and the creek behind her house. Looking back, she was interested in the environmental systems around her but, at the time, science learning was memorizing vocabulary. She attended Title 1 schools without the immersive learning opportunities to spark an academic interest in STEM.  Like her family, she’s built a career in transforming education and the student experience. As an undergraduate director in African American Studies at the University of Maryland, she helped students connect with their career paths by connecting academics to culturally relevant internships and independent study projects outside the classroom. This approach led her to lead the Jane Goodall Institute’s youth program and then to Out Teach, and it has driven the prioritization for program model’s that can drive gender equity in STEM.

Out Teach first heard about this opportunity through an email from the Georgia Center for Nonprofits announcing upcoming grants.

Out Teach is opening the outside to empower the next generation of fearless female innovators to ask questions, expand learning, and move from theory to action to crack open new possibilities. Research from the University of Indiana shows that playing or spending time outdoors is the number one way girls’ interest in STEM is first sparked.

Though other organizations dedicated to outdoor learning exist, Out Teach is unique in its focus on science education. “How outdoor science education can help girls stay engaged with science,” a 2021 article in the International Journal of Science Education, posits that teaching children science outdoors could help close gender gaps in science careers. The abstract states:

Gaps in science engagement and efficacy in childhood likely explain why women remain underrepresented in science careers. Early intervention programs may address root causes of gender gaps in science careers. Outdoor science education (OSE) is one understudied but promising strategy, that provides ample opportunity for reform based instructional practices that may benefit girls, including girls of color. We evaluated how an OSE program differentially impacted the science grades, science knowledge, and science self-efficacy of fifth grade girls versus boys. We found the OSE treatment increased knowledge and maintained science grades for girls.

Additionally, a study by Microsoft in partnership with KRC Research revealed five insights into how to engage more girls in STEM, which include providing hands-on experiences, such as those children have the opportunity to engage in while learning science outdoors, and generating excitement. Science can seem daunting and dull inside four walls but comes to life outdoors where girls have the opportunity to learn in a real-world environment. 

Out Teach’s impact goals in its current strategic plan are to reach 250,000 students and 10,000 teachers by 2025. To date, we are on track to reach that goal, despite the pandemic when we were able to quickly and successfully pivot to a virtual training model. We have generated interest in our programming not only at the individual school level but at a district level in several states. 

Out Teach annually measures the impact of our instructional support to determine our effect on students and teachers using the following outcome measurement instruments. 

• Instructional Coaching Reflection Surveys. 

• Observational feedback using the Teacher Practices Rubric, developed by Out Teach. 

• Professional Development Surveys. 

Student and teacher outcomes we will focus on during the 2023-24 academic year follow. Because the outcomes are dependent on the focus area that each educator feels is the most important for their students, not all outcome goals will apply to every student and educator. However, the expected percentage of improvement remains the same across all areas.  

At least 75% of teachers will improve teaching practices.  

At the end of the school year, Cohort FY24 will gain knowledge and develop skills to plan and provide high-quality instruction that: 

a.)          facilitates rigorous learning in the outdoor setting. 

b.)         supports student-direct learning. 

c.)          develops critical thinking skills. 

d.)         encourages self-management and self-efficacy. 

At least 75% of students will: 

Gain knowledge and develop skills to: 

* Make meaning of outdoor phenomena through the application of literacy and math skills. 

* Think critically

  Enact behaviors to: 

* "Do" science (i.e., implementing science and engineering practices). 

* Exhibit self-management and self-efficacy.  

 How Instructional Support Data is Used 

1) Teacher Support. Data from observations and teacher reflections are used by coaches to help them make decisions about how best to support teachers.  

 2) Continuous Quality Improvement. Data gives us insight into program elements that we can use to help us improve.   

3) Sharing Impact. Our district and school customers receive data overviews and in our coaching program have a mid-year review where we look at the available data together. We also share results with our partners, such as philanthropic organizations, and the general public through annual reports. 

Digital Professional Learning Program 

Evaluation of Out Teach’s new Digital Pathways professional learning program will broadly focus on the four areas below. Specifics will be determined by a logic model, which is currently in development.  

1. Teacher Outcomes: We will assess the impact of the program on educators by considering how the digital learning experience improved their teaching practice as well as any change in attitude, knowledge, skills and/or behaviors.   

1. Feedback on Learning Experience: Feedback from participating teachers will be used to assess whether they found the learning valuable and, if so, which activities were the most valuable to them, etc. 

2. Implementation Metrics: We will gather program implementation metrics and processes (e.g., educator engagement and attendance, program delivery statistics, customer service feedback, etc.). Since this is a new initiative, we will also use evaluation data to assess personnel time and the feasibility of our current cost model. 

3. Digital User Experience: We will assess the digital users’ (i.e., teachers) experience as we leverage the new technology. In addition to determining what is working well, we will also consider how to improve program delivery. Our ultimate goal is to determine the impact variance between in-person and virtual learning. 

Out Teach Theory of Change

Not applicable

Out Teach 

Full-time staff:  28

Part-time staff: 2 

26 total consultants

• 2 accounting
• 5 building/engineering 
• 2 general business
• 5 HR/staff development
• 3 legal
• 4 marketing/public relations
• 4 IT/website support
• 1 program development and support

Out Teach was established 20 years ago as a small community organization in Fort Worth, TX, created by a group of dedicated teachers who believed in the power of outdoor. The founding teachers and a small group of volunteers began building learning gardens at local schools and developed a teacher training program focused on outdoor experiential learning. In 2007, Out Teach incorporated as an independent nonprofit with the mission to equip teachers with the power of experiential learning outdoors to unlock student performance. Since then, the organization has expanded to serve nine metro areas in four regions across the Texas, the Southeast and Mid-Atlantic. 

Out Teach believes that new and different experiences, knowledge and perspectives help everyone grow and succeed.  We embrace diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) practices not only because they are morally important, but also because these efforts strengthen the organization and its work.  As an organization, our DEI journey began as a collaboration between staff and Board committees assembled to formalize our position on the importance of DEI and to develop a measurement and action strategy that ensures that our actions are aligned with our statements and intentions. 

Each year since 2019, we’ve hired a third party to administer a staff survey that measures the following areas of DEI within Out Teach:  Culture and Belonging, Attitude and Contributions, Fairness, Voice, and Opportunities and Resources.  Our scores have increased in almost every category when analyzing the data by race, ethnicity, and gender.   We have invested in initiatives in each category as well, including things such as hosting an annual all staff retreat, training our team on culturally responsive teaching practices, changing our recruitment process to ensure a diverse candidate pool, investing in professional development, revising our compensation policy, and many more. We have also met our performance objectives above each year since launching.  Our staff team and Board are more diverse than ever with 30% of our staff and 50% of our board team identifying as people of color.

Programmatically, we are committed to education equity; it is at the heart of what we do.  We focus our work on Title 1 elementary schools to open up opportunities for students from historically underserved and under-resourced communities, and 70% of the teachers in our programs come from diverse backgrounds.  In our teaching practice, Out Teach uses Culturally Responsive and Sustaining Pedagogy as the underlying methodology for addressing equity and anti-racism, prioritizing how we recognize students’ personal and cultural references in all aspects of learning.  By activating students’ prior knowledge and making learning contextual, we encourage students to leverage their cultural capital and build relationships based on respect for diversity within these principles, creating classrooms that evolve into places of equity based upon the diverse strengths and values of its students.

The Out Teach business model is based on fulfilling the needs of low-income schools for high-quality science professional development and instructional support.  While most schools have established support services for math and English Language Arts instruction, they do not have the same types of resources dedicated to science.  Out Teach provides these services through the physical resources of Outdoor Learning Labs that provide a foundational platform for more impactful teaching and learning in earth science, life science and physical science, coupled with one-on-one instructional coaching for teachers which bring these resources to life for students. 

The business model has been successfully replicated from a single market in North Texas, to operating regions serving metro Atlanta, Baltimore, Charlotte, Raleigh-Durham and the greater Washington, D.C. area.  

Financially, our business model leverages diverse funding streams to make these programs viable and sustainable. Fees for services with partner districts and schools annually comprise approximately 35% of organizational revenue. These funds are supplemented with corporate sponsorship fees associated with large-scale volunteer and engagement partnerships with companies to build outdoor spaces and resource schools. These fees annually contribute between 30-40% of Out Teach’s revenues. These diverse streams make annual institutional philanthropy and individual giving goals achievable and provide a sustainable revenue mix for the organization as a whole. 

The organization is a detailed steward of financial resources and has built a significant operating surplus to provide flexibility for growth activities over the next two years. Out Teach has deployed growth capital funds to sharpen its focus on science, expand programs, grow organizational capacity by upgrading systems, and build a school partnerships team to deepen impact. 

Pre-pandemic, Out Teach’s financial sustainability was powered by the success of its earned income streams, which in 2019 totaled $1.9M, and increase of 143% since 2015.  Since then, new corporate partnerships, philanthropic grants, and a rebound in school fees have put the organization back on track as a sustainable enterprise.

Grants

The Jenesis Group – $2.5M

Rainwater Charitable Foundation – $1M

NewSchools Venture Fund – $250K

Sprouts Foundation – $150K

Emerson Collective – $90K

Lyda Hill Philanthropies – $80K

Corporate Partnerships

Mercedes Benz USA

Cox Enterprises

Takeda Pharmaceuticals

Washington Commanders

Blue Cross Blue Shield of Texas

School Fees

$785K in FY22 (ended June 30, 2022)