Student Engagement with Hands-on Science

This month on It’s Time for Science, we talked about student engagement with a special guest. Host Tom Racine interviewed award-winning science communicator Maynard Okereke, the Hip Hop MD.

Episode Summary

Tom talks with Maynard about the importance of staying curious and keeping students and ourselves engaged. They discuss why you don’t need to be an expert to teach science, embracing changing perspectives as a part of science, and why representation matters for everyone. Maynard then shares the most surprising thing he’s learned from doing an investigation!

Episode Guest

Maynard Okereke

Maynard Okereke, better known as the Hip Hop MD, graduated from the University of Washington with a degree in Civil Engineering. He is an award-winning Science Communicator, receiving the Asteroid Award for “Best Streaming Content” and the People of Change Award for his community outreach efforts. His passion for science and entertainment and his curiosity for new innovations have taken him through an incredible life journey.

Noticing a lack of minority involvement in STEM fields, Maynard created Hip Hop Science to encourage minorities and youth to pursue more advanced career paths. His background in engineering, acting, music, business, and credible work in STEM make him uniquely qualified to engage on a wide variety of topics from an entertaining perspective. This is highly reflected in his speaking engagements and daily social media posts, which provide both humorous and informative SciComm content.

Learn More about Hip Hop Science

https://www.hiphopscienceshow.com/
https://www.instagram.com/hiphopscienceshow/
https://www.facebook.com/HipHopScienceShow

It’s Time for Science! To get in touch with us, whether to offer some feedback, ideas for future episodes or reviews, or just to say hi, send us a message at itstimeforscience@schoolspecialty.com. We’d love to hear from you!

This month’s Insights article: Engaging Students as Active Science Learners with FOSS

Look for School Specialty and FOSS on X and Facebook. It’s Time for Science is produced by School Specialty^® and the Full Option Science System^™ (FOSS^®) at the Lawrence Hall of Science, University of California, Berkeley.