As a child, Emerlyn Gatchalian was always the teacher: “I’d always get the role of teacher whenever I had playtime with my friends.”
She began her formal teaching career in the Philippines, where a passionate chemistry teacher, who sometimes wore a magician hat and waved a fairy wand, inspired her love for teaching science. “She made learning so exciting and fun,” Emerlyn says. In 2005, after a decade teaching in the Philippines, Emerlyn came to the U.S., but, “Teaching here was so different.” Coming from a more disciplined classroom tradition, she wasn’t used to class management issues. So she sought additional training and learned to implement new classroom routines and policies.
Julia LaCava was a summer intern at the Concord Consortium. A junior at Ithaca College, she majors in communications. The Automated Scoring for Argumentation project, which we affectionately called “HASBot” is wrapping up. This four-year partnership between the High-Adventure Science (HAS) team at the Concord Consortium and Educational Testing Service (ETS) was funded by the […]
Thomas Troy’s dream vacation includes a trip to the Arctic “to witness rapid climate change,” but the best adventure he’s ever had was much closer to the equator. He and his family spent five weeks on a homestay in Costa Rica where they took classes to learn Spanish, which were “both rigorous and rewarding.” While his family “took advantage of opportunities to get to know as many Costa Ricans (or Ticos) as possible, such as local clerks, waiters, and teachers,” they also found time to go snorkeling, bird watching, and swimming.
Mason Converse admits that he gets a fair number of “funny looks” when he introduces himself at conferences. He’s both a science teacher and the head football coach at Harper Creek High School, which comes as a surprise to a number of people.
Before turning to teaching 9-11th grade, Toni Kaui spent ten years as an architect designing houses for wealthy homeowners. It did not inspire her. “I switched careers because I was tired of all the wasted resources,” she explains. Teaching had “more rewarding outcomes.” For her and for her students.
Alison Pflanz is excited by the abundance of different educational technology resources available online. She exclaims, “There is so much room for growth and learning for teachers and students to make each school day the best it possibly can be!”
The Akers School is on the relatively remote Lemoore Naval Air Station located halfway between San Francisco and Los Angeles, in the heart of the San Joaquin Valley, an important agricultural region. Karla Orosco has been teaching 7th grade integrated science classes and electives for 18 years to Akers students who come from all over the U.S., as well as all over the world—Japan, Guam, the Philippines, and European bases.
“We wondered when you’d figure it out.” Once David Oyler decided to be a teacher, his friends and colleagues wondered what had taken him so long. They understood his heart lay in teaching long before he did.
Barbara Algarin was a chemistry major who also tutored other students in chemistry while in college and afterwards. “I had always dreamed of becoming a veterinarian, but I felt I was good at helping others in school. Then my mom mentioned that New York City was looking for people to become teachers,” she explains. Feeling at a crossroads and wanting a change, Barbara applied for a New York City Teaching Fellowship, a program that prepares applicants to teach high-needs subjects such as science in New York City classrooms. The first time she applied, they lost her application. She persisted, and applied again the following year and was accepted.
Christine Fernandes began as a horticulture major at Pennsylvania State University, but transferred to agricultural education so she could become a teacher. She absolutely loves her career choice. She learned about the Concord Consortium through a listserv from her alma mater. We’re collaborating with Penn State on our GEODE project to develop new geodynamic plate tectonic modeling software for middle school students. The software is designed to allow students to observe and describe the formation of surface geologic features in terms of plate interactions. Christine explains, “It really clicked for the students, seeing what was happening below the ground in relation to the size and magnitude of the earthquakes along the western coast of South America.”