“I started teaching Physics and Chem and then I worked my way up to Honors Physics, AP Physics, and started to get feedback from my students that they were going into engineering and that they were building robots and things like that. So I started reaching out to the community to figure out what kind of resources we had and I ended up starting a makerspace here (….) So now I'm in charge of all of the technology at the school when it comes to green screens, 3D printers, podcasting. So any kind of technology that you can push into any type of class is kind of my my thing now.”
TEACHING JOURNEY AND PRACTICE
“My mom was a teacher (…) My dad was a stay-at-home-dad and my mom was kind of the breadwinner of the household. So I grew up just always going to her high school events because she was a high school Business teacher.”
“I had this absolutely amazing Physics teacher in high school. I don't know if it was the way he taught, but I just felt empowered by that. So that's why I ended up going to college for Physics. Originally, I think I always wanted to be a teacher—I was a lifeguard, I taught swim lessons, and I was a swim coach. But I wanted to be an astronaut. So I went in for Physics to do that and then I just figured out I really loved gravity--I like this Earth. And so then I changed to go into Education when I was in college.”
“When I first started, I was old-school teacher-like—I lecture, you do this . Now my classes are complete discovery, the kids do something they're interested in. My main class is a research class. The kids pick a topic they're interested in, we research it, and we do a presentation at the end of the year. So it's complete student buy-in because they're researching things that they're interested in. We also do an R.O.V., a remotely operated vehicle (….) So it's definitely all student-based, but it took a good 15 years to get to that.”