Orosco- Science
Karla J. Orosco
My students call me Ms. Orosco or Ms. O.
I have 29 years experience teaching middle school mathematics and science. I was born in Hanford, CA and graduated from Hanford High School. I was an accomplished athlete (softball pitcher), band member, and class salutatorian. I am a proud graduate of the University of California, Berkeley ( Cal- Go Bears!) and I remain very active as an alumnus and do a lot of outreach for Cal in the Central Valley. I have worked at the Lawrence Hall of Science on the Berkeley campus as well attending National Science Foundation Institutes at NASA Center Dryden, University of Texas in Austin, and University of Wisconsin in Madison. As a 2003 Woodrow Wilson Fellow, I did Genomics Research at the Lawrenceville School outside Princeton, NJ. I was also involved as a GEMS Associate (Great Expectations in Math & Science) and a Teacher Consultant & past webmaster for the San Joaquin Valley Writing Project housed at CSU Fresno. In November 2006, I was accepted to the first Google Teacher Academy and spent a day at the Googleplex in Mountain View learning about Google's Tools and Google's many applications for education. I continue to attend many workshops with other Tech Rockstars to collaborate on ways that we can continue to integrate technology into our curriculum and meet the needs of 21st Century Students. In the summer of 2017, I attended the US Navy STEM Academy at the Naval Academy in Annapolis. In the summer of 2018, I attended the Missile Defense Agency Institute in Richmond, VA. We did visit Dahlgren and Norfolk Naval bases.
Special Recognitions:
Lawrence Hall of Science: Outstanding Science Teacher Recognition
Teacher-Ambassador for the Concord Consortium https://concord.org/blog/teaching-a-world-of-students/
Amplify: Our Backbone Curriculum
For 4 years, Akers piloted new science curriculum that integrated digital simulations with the new Next Generation Science Standards with the Lawrence Hall of Science's Learning Design Team. This curriculum is now published by Amplify. As a science department, we are very excited to implement the entire curriculum for the last 3 years. I have enjoyed working with Lawrence Hall of Science and Amplify over the last 6-7 years. This curriculum is student focused and centers around a Big Question. Students will also experience a few engineering projects where they will simulate being an engineering intern assigned to a project. As a student at UC Berkeley, I did work for the Lawrence Hall of Science for their Summer Science Camps.
- In December 2020, we moved into our new junior high building with a new science lab classrooms and a massive shared science storage room.
- I am one of 3 lead teachers in CA for a project called #Waters. The Watershed Awareness using Technology and Environmental Research for Sustainability (WATERS) project is developing and researching a student-centered, universally accessible curriculum for teaching water concepts and water career awareness. The project is applying principles from Universal Design for Learning (UDL) to create a powerful, scalable approach to water learning open to all students. By providing flexibility in information presentation and student responses, reducing barriers in instruction, and offering appropriate supports and challenges, the WATERS project is paving a path to increased access to proven curricula and approaches that hold the potential to greatly increase awareness of and engagement with water concepts and career pathways in learners nationwide. More information here: https://concord.org/our-work/research-projects/waters/
Summer 2023
I will be a participating in the year long program STEAM Leadership with the Krause Innovation Center at Foothill College in Los Altos, CA
I will be going to The Concord Consortium to finish up the WATERS Curriculum so it can be published on https://learn.concord.org/
Go Eagles!
:o) Ms. O
The primary question was not what do we know, but how do we know it.
-Aristotle