Lori Henrickson works at the curriculum level in her district in Nevada and is the state science teachers association executive director. On this episode, she shared her approach to NGSS focused professional development and outlined for us how she conducted her sessions. This past year she focused on 3 main goals: student assessment, building relationships and connections between scientists and teachers and identifying phenomena. Lori shared with us some helpful professional development resources to navigate through NGSS curriculum development.

Jeanne Chowning and Hanako Osuga sat down with us to discuss some of the curricular work that they have done specifically focused on race, racism, and genetics within the context of addressing and navigating these topics in the classroom.

This week we had a conversation with Erica Posthuma, a current high school chemistry teacher. Erica shared with us some of the practices she has implemented as a “modeler” and how she helps students develop their own understandings from their observations and understandings. Erica also discussed her journey as a teacher, including how she was affected by the pandemic and how modeling has changed how she approaches chemistry. Erica wraps up this episode discussing some of the avenues she has found to publish as a high school chemistry teacher.

This week we chatted with Jeanne Norris who is a part of the Washington University Institute for School Partnership. She discussed some of the features and benefits of the MySci program, which she helped develop. This program provides teachers with quarterly kits, curriculum and professional development to incorporate high quality science material in their classrooms. Jeanne also discusses educative curriculum and some of the behind the scenes aspects of building elementary curriculum. She talks about how science can be tied to reading and math standards and help students grow holistically.

In this week’s podcast, we sat down with Madison Levine and Rachel Lauzier, two seniors in the Neag School of Education at the University of Connecticut. They discuss their student teaching experience this past spring and how they navigated being a pre-service teacher in a pandemic. The two of them touch upon hybrid teaching and the challenges they were faced with when balancing in person and at home students. Moreover, they discuss resources they found helpful while facilitating a hybrid classroom and share with us their experience engaging students in NGSS practices.

Meet executive director of Stem 4 Real, Dr. Leena Bakshi. She shares with us the growth of Stem 4 Real and the important services they provide,
“we realized also that in order for us to really be part of a movement, we wanted to take on professional learning, teacher training school systems, and really look at it in terms of how can we combine instructional curriculum materials, pedagogy, in a way that looks at the intersection of equity and social justice and then robust STEM education at the same time.” Her energy and passion for her work shines through. Be sure to check out the shownotes, and follow Leena on Twitter.

Dr. Bakshi will also be presenting at NSTA in April. Check out the show notes for more details. Shownotes at  www.ngsnavigators.com/blog/067 for links to resources. 

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