Teachers are responsible for modeling how to obtain information and how to analyze and apply that information to solve problems. A teacher should enable students to discover ideas and build their own understanding.” Alicia’s Story Teaching Discipline Chemistry Why Chemistry “I love discovering the widespread applications of science, and I want to share the joy of science with my students.” Professional Experience Throughout college, Alicia worked as an undergraduate teaching assistant in general and organic chemistry at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. For several semesters, she also worked as a field trip docent at the Birmingham Botanical Gardens, where […]
[…]in making things safe for students in so many ways. We at Kaleidoscope are deeply grateful to our community for writing and sharing your stories, as well as for reading and listening to the stories of others. Through our work, we have learned, without question, that stories are how we show up for each other. They’re how we celebrate, interrogate and honor the strengths, identities and experiences of our world’s beautiful plurality. They’re how we hold each other accountable. And they’re how we learn, together, to build opportunities that dismantle systems of oppression. Our nation’s systems of schooling have a […]
[…]to “steal conflict” from those directly involved. When conflicts are stolen, the act of seeking “justice” is passive, oppressive, and creates a false sense of accountability rather than repairing harm and healing relationships. When the conflict was stolen, I was robbed of an opportunity to develop and practice agency; hold someone accountable; and develop solutions that work for me, the classroom and the collective community. My mother was robbed of the opportunity to express how this incident could have a financial impact on our family and also to hear how her words negatively impacted me. The teacher was robbed of […]
[…]in general. In PD sessions like the one I described above, we teachers are expected to learn “new knowledge” and incorporate it into our work. PD in this sense is a form of filling in the gaps or adding new practices, so-called “additive PD.” Additive PD leads to an emotional response: an overwhelming feeling of needing to do more and profound insecurity about what to actually do. Eventually, we might also experience feelings of defeat because our learning was so superficial that our implementation lacked staying power. Integrated STEM instruction as a transformative PD experience In contrast to additive PD, […]
[…]allow my students to design and execute experiments or simply learn through discovery year-round—for free! The only problem was that if students weren’t focused, they could stay “engaged” by playing around for an hour without learning key concepts. Therefore, I designed several labs to guide them through the simulations. By the end of my first year, I had developed 10 labs and thought, “Why not do something more?” In my second year, I finished writing 20 labs and pitched the idea of a book at the Knowles Teacher Initiative Summer Conference. Once I started sharing my work with others, prudence […]
[…]influential black authors like Maya Angelou, James Baldwin, or Audre Lorde that I had a deeply uncomfortable realization: I’d never done anything to take responsibility for my own anti-racist education. That thing my principal had done where she was just a well-wishing bystander but not actually doing anything to proactively promote trans liberation? That’s been me and my White identity. That thing my principal had done where she was just a well-wishing bystander but not actually doing anything to proactively promote trans liberation? That’s been me and my White identity. There’s a parallel here of “Oh no! I didn’t do […]
[…]at a downtown march that said things like “We want teachers, not SJW [social justice warriors]!” and “Work 12 months!”; others were spit upon from the office buildings we were marching around, and everyone heard people saying things like “Go back to work!” and “Stop being so lazy.” Putting aside these misrepresentations of teaching as a profession, it was infuriating that we had to walk off the job and march in the streets to convince the powers that be in the city that our students deserve basic support services. Our strike focused on increasing support staffing in our schools (e.g., […]
