The Long Beach Elementary Science and Math Teacher Education Partnership (LBESTEP), now in its second year, has developed several innovative approaches to engage and prepare future science and math K-12 teachers. In this presentation, we choose to focus on two that entail creative collaboration between California State University at Long Beach (CSULB), the Long Beach Unified School District (LBUSD), and Long Beach City and Cerritos Colleges (LBCC+CC). "Summer Science at the Beach" is a standards-based (NSF curriculum) summer camp for grades 4-7 youngsters, staffed by LBUSD K-12 science teachers, K-12 Science Alliance teachers, and pre-service teachers. The camp curriculum was designed and approved by a team comprising LBUSD science resource specialists and curriculum supervisors, and CSULB science education faculty.

Operated as a pilot in summer 2000 with 12 teaching staff and 70 students, this program has proved to be extremely successful. Evaluation of program impact demonstrated improved content knowledge and a positive attitude toward teaching science for pre-service teachers, and an increased affinity for mentoring activities for in-service teachers. For summer 2001, the science camp will expand and link to a math camp, and recreation and computer camps at CSULB. A second LBESTEP innovation has been the creation of a video promoting careers in teaching Math and Science. Entitled: "Teaching Math and Science; Reaching for Excellence", this video incorporates footage from the "Summer Science at the Beach" and math camps; elementary, high school, community college, and university classrooms; and interviews with area faculty and students, and a science community leader. The video creation process was a deeply engaging, community-building exercise, which, we believe, strengthened our LBESTEP consortium considerably. The video has been well-received by viewers, expect to disseminate it widely.