It seems that the purpose of many high school chemistry courses is to prepare students for their first college chemistry course. Just look through a traditional high school chemistry textbook; it is very similar to a college freshman chemistry textbook. However, less than 15 percent of our students take college chemistry. In fact, high school chemistry is the only chemistry course that the vast majority of our students will ever have. Furthermore, studies have shown that we are not succeeding in our efforts to teach scientific concepts. We are graduating students that are barely literate in the sciences and many of these students have developed a negative attitude towards science.
It appears to me that the content we currently teach in our chemistry courses is inappropriate for the majority of our students. In fact, for some students, it is downright torturous. I think we need a chemistry course that shows students how chemistry affects them; a course that places chemistry in a technological and societal context; a course that encourages students to work together in groups and to make decisions based on the content that they receive.
In response to a growing need to make students more aware of the role chemistry plays in their everyday life and to make them more informed citizens by increasing their scientific literacy, the Education Division of the AMERICAN CHEMICAL SOCIETY has developed a high school chemistry course - ChemCom (Chemistry in the Community). ChemCom enhances science literacy through a high school curriculum that emphasizes the impact of chemistry on society. ChemCom has been written by teams of high school, college, and university teachers. Each of ChemCom's eight units centers on a chemistry-related technological issue now confronting our society and the world. These units include major chemical concepts, basic chemical vocabulary, and laboratory skills expected in any high school chemistry course. The program contains a large number and variety of student-oriented activities. There are numerous laboratory exercises, including many that were developed especially for ChemCom.
As a ChemCom teacher, I feel that this is the kind of chemistry course that provides my students with "real-life" chemistry concerns. The use of cooperative learning strategies are very effective in preparing students for decision-making processes. The concepts in ChemCom are usually presented in a spiral curriculum format. This method provides knowledge on a "need to know basis." For example, balancing chemical equations is presented in several units. In successive units, it usually goes into greater detail. I also found that the "ChemCom way" of teaching chemistry became more enjoyable with the realization that my students were "excited" about chemistry.
Joe Zisk
Chemistry Teacher