STEM Content Knowledge in Practice

TEACHING IB BIOLOGY HL

2022-2023

I am in my third year of teaching a new prep. This time it is IB Biology, a subject that I love and am familiar with so in some regards it is less challenging than AP Chemistry and ESS, but it remains a challenge. As our school proceeds with our second year of the IB program more students are stepping up and trying the IB courses and more teachers are joining the group. Understanding and teaching an IB course, however, is a lot of work, and I do not think that we are being trained and prepared adequately. As we emerge from the pandemic, HISD and my school are putting a lot of emphasis on training teachers to use CANVAS, our new LMS platform. To be honest, I do not need a weekly lesson on how to use CANVAS, but I do need effective training on the IB program and philosophy. My opinion is that teachers need to know content really well and good strategies to teach that content, using technology is merely one out of many teaching strategies that we need to learn.

TEACHING IB ENVIRONMENTAL SYSTEMS AND SOCIETIES

2021-2022

As our school becomes an official IB school, teachers are being asked to teach IB courses and to be trained in the IB philosophy and curriculum. I have never taught an Environmental Science course before, and I have never taught an IB course before, so my learning curve is again steep as I continue to challenge myself with new content, new curriculum, content, and philosphy, and new exams at the end of the year. What I particularly like about this course ESS is that it is a melding of a science and a humanities class. Not only are students expected to learn about environmental science, but they are also expected to think about how different cultures value nature and the environment, and to evaluate how our values affects our experiences. This is a refreshing change of pace for me, and I am enjoying this aspect of the course. It is challenging, however to truly teach the content in one year, as many schools teach the course over two years.

TEACHING AP CHEMISTRY

2020-2021

The AP Chemistry teacher at my school left at the end of the 2019-2020 school year and no teachers wanted to teach the course. Because I feel deeply that schools should offer rigorous STEM classes, especially when students want to take the courses, I offered to teach the course. It is quite humbling to take on a new course when you have 20+ years of teaching experience. I put myself through a whirlwind summer brush-up course for college chemistry including watching the College Board's review videos made for AP Chemistry students, taking an APSI course, finding a mentor to help me with the content and materials, and doing lots and lots of practice problems! I also joined a group called "AP Teach" that holds monthly sessions to help AP Chemistry teachers share resources which has been invaluable to me.

Civic Scientist School Outreach Program

My classroom participated in Rice University's Civic Scientist School Outreach Program in the fall of 2019. Two Scientists spoke with my students about their research:

André W. Droxler, Ph.D.: a professor in the Department of Earth Science at Rice University. He spoke with us about becoming a scientist against stacked odds, and his research on coral reefs.

Robert Laroche, Graduate Student in the Department of BioSciences at Rice University (pictured at left). He spoke with us about ecology and evolution, what it is like to be a graduate student, and taught us about galls native to Houston and the insects and trees that make them.

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