How do you instill confidence, work skills and a love of science in middle school students? Have them teach science concepts to fourth graders.

The Youth Teaching Youth science outreach and enrichment program through the Natural History Museum of Utah has been empowering middle and high school aged students for 30 years.

“The overall goal is to connect students with science and to create opportunities,” NHMU teen program manager Mariana Alliatti Joaquim said. She said youth teachers gain a deeper understanding and interest in science while gaining social skills, teaching skills and confidence. 

“A lot of our students start shy and have a hard time talking in public, but here they have to and they learn very quickly,” she said.

Jason Taylor was a youth teacher in the first year of the program back in 1995. He said the experience influenced his career path.

“I did this program for six years, and my parents were both educators, but I think that this is what kind of pushed me over the top into going into education,” he said.

Taylor said the experience of teaching elementary school children as a young teen brought him out of his comfort zone and helped him learn to be comfortable speaking in front of others.

“You get a barrage of questions that you don’t expect from a group of fourth graders, and it’s a lot more comfortable to talk to them than it might be to fellow students or maybe other adults,” Taylor said.

Taylor now works at Hawthorn Academy as a Behavior Interventionist. Halley Miranda, previously Communications Specialist for the school, is another original participant of the YTY program (1998-2004.) Both took advantage of the internships, scholarships and field trips the program offered.

They both helped arrange for the YTY experience at the charter school’s West Jordan campus this year even though the youth teachers, Glendale Middle School students, typically only work with schools in the Salt Lake City School District.

The middle school aged teachers taught Hawthorn Academy fourth graders about fossils. They brought specimens from the museum to encourage students to be curious, ask questions and think like scientists.

Fourth grade teacher Nicol Navarrete said it was a great review for her students because it gave them an opportunity to apply critical reasoning skills to what they have learned.

“It’s something that I don’t have the ability to provide in class so it’s nice for somebody else to come in and give them this opportunity to have hands-on and really visualize and see and touch and feel,” Navarrete said.

The students were also excited to have teenagers running the activity, which Taylor said made them more willing to listen.

“I think that they see somebody who’s not that much older from them and who might be the same age as one of their siblings, and they feel a little bit more comfortable learning from somebody that’s the same age,” Taylor said.

Thirty middle school students are part of this year’s program. Students can continue the program through high school with internships and paid positions at the museum.

Miranda worked at the museum as part of the program and she said the trips they took—white water rafting, national parks—are some of her best memories. She said the program was a great opportunity.

“The biggest impact the program had on me was having an adult leader who believed in me and had high expectations of me,” Miranda said. “She held me accountable for my actions in a firm but loving manner. This program focuses on low-income families where often both parents work, as it was in my case, so having those extra adults made a huge difference.”

The program started as a way to involve youth at the museum not as visitors but as contributors to the resources. It is based in the Salt Lake School District at Glendale Middle School.

“I think it really can be life changing,” Taylor said. “I really wish that it were to be expanded to more middle schools.” λ