Current Practice
Given that this is only my second year at EPS, the Curriculum and Discipline Design Category of the Curricular Design Domain is a surprisingly well-developed component of my current professional/teaching practice. New ideas for course activities come naturally to me and I enjoy implementing my ideas to the extent practicable.
Below are brief descriptions of the indicators in this category with specific examples of how they are consistent elements of my teaching practice.
(1) designs and implements courses that reflect teacher mastery of their academic discipline and its teaching methodologies
Designing and implementing courses that reflect teacher mastery of their academic discipline and its teaching methodologies is a consistent element of my teaching practice.
I am currently implementing two courses in an on-going basis at EPS: Scientific Thinking 1 for 6th graders (primarily a physical science course) and Environmental Practices – Global Solutions for 8th graders (primarily a social science course). While I did not design either of these courses in total, I have designed pieces of them as needed to keep them current and relevant. I will discuss this further in the context of the other indicators in this domain.
I have a B.S. in Chemistry and an M.S. and Ph.D. in Environmental Sciences so I believe I’ve mastered the academic disciplines well enough to teach these classes. I have not, however, had any formal instruction on how best to teach them. For Scientific Thinking 1, my main go-to has been teaching the material through hands-on laboratory activities and a little bit of direct instruction. As outlined in my writeups for indicators in the Professional Practice and Pedagogical Practice Domains, I have consulted with other EPS teachers with more formal teaching experience than I have and implemented their ideas (e.g. Artifact Prof-9 and Artifact Ped-10). Two things I could do to further improve in this area are to actually read the National Science Teaching Association newsletters and emails I frequently receive and possibly attend one of their conferences. I could also ask my discipline colleagues for recommendations for best practices particular to science.
(2) designs and implements courses framed by the school’s pedagogical tenants–experience, inquiry, integration
Designing and implementing courses framed by the school’s pedagogical tenants of experience, inquiry and integration is a consistent element of my teaching practice.
Experience, inquiry and integration are a consistent part of my current courses as follows:
- Scientific Thinking 1: I implement 24 hands-on lab activities in this year-long course (Artifact CD-1)
- Scientific Thinking 1: Labs are almost always inquiry-based first, followed by review of what students just learned in the lab (i.e., not the traditional follow-the-recipe and everyone should get the same result) (Artifact CD-2).
- Scientific Thinking 1: The 6th/10th grade integration project was discussed thoroughly in the Pedagogical Practice Domain (Artifact Ped-9).
- Environmental Practices 8: I implement one hands-on lab activity, one field trip, one guest speaker, and two projects where students can choose their own topics of interest (Artifact CD-3).
Since coming to EPS, I have also designed and implemented a seminar and an Education Beyond the Classroom 8th grade experience. The seminar was called “Empowerment in the Face of a Suffering Earth” and it provided a venue for students to explore their feelings about the current state of the environment and develop a plan of action for moving forward in uncertain times (Artifact CD-4). The Education Beyond the Classroom 8th grade experience was called “Nirvana by Nature” and provided a way for students to contemplate the 8th grade question “What Does It Mean To Be Human?” (see itinerary in Artifact CD-5 and photos in Artifact RC-1).
(3) collaboratively designs and evolves course curricula that are reflective of their academic discipline’s philosophy and derivative of the school’s overarching philosophy
(4) updates course content to reflect the contemporary world
Collaboratively designing and evolving course curricula that are reflective of my academic discipline’s philosophy and derivative of the school’s overarching philosophy and updating course content to reflect the contemporary world are consistent elements of my teaching practice. I decided to address these two indicators at the same time because so much of the work I will highlight is applicable to both.
First of all, one of the main reasons I work at EPS is because I believe so wholeheartedly in school’s overarching philosophy: “We inspire students to create a better world through Critical Thinking, Responsible Action, Compassionate Leadership, and Wise Innovation.” This makes designing, evolving and updating courses to be reflective of the contemporary (hopefully better) world natural for me. To be honest, with every conversation I have or article I read, I am continually thinking of new ideas in this regard.
Some of the ways I have done this at EPS include:
- Creating and delivering a seminar “Empowerment in the Face of a Suffering Earth” (Artifact CD-4) and creating and implementing an EBC experience for 8th graders (Artifact CD-5) which I have already described above.
- Creating and offering a Forest Appreciation Club for Middle Schoolers which I ran for three trimesters (Artifact CD-6).
- Co-creating and offering a “Chill Out” club in the winter of 2020 (Artifact CD-7). I created this club after conversations with Jamie Andrus about how EPS did not have many clubs to support students who may just need a quiet space to regroup themselves. Jamie plans to continue offering this club in the future under a different name.
- Creating a Social Emotional Learning activity for 6th graders on mindfulness where they relax to quiet music and write in gratitude journals (Artifact CD-8). The 6th grade advising team has implemented this three times.
- Proposing and scheduling a 6th grade field trip for Spring 2020 to Bellingham, Washington to see a show at the SPARK Museum of Electrical Invention which would enhance the Scientific Thinking 1 curriculum (Artifact CD-9). As well, I collaborated with Molly Lori to combine this field trip with lunch at a Mexican restaurant where students could practice speaking Spanish. Although this trip could not run in Spring 2020 due to COVID-19, I do plan to re-propose it next year.
- Adding a consultation period with a “real” scientist for my Environmental Practices 8 class on their independent projects. My undergraduate advisor who is an Emeritus Professor from the College of Earth, Ocean and the Environment at the University of Delaware happened to be visiting Seattle and I invited him to my class consult with students on their projects. (Artifact CD-10).
- Adding a project in Environmental Practices 8 related to the COVID-19. While studying solutions to environmental challenges during the Spring of 2020, it seemed like a huge opportunity to incorporate some study of the novel coronavirus and the world’s response to it. I create an assignment after consultation with EPS science faculty and implemented it within a few days of first thinking of the project (Artifact CD-11).
- Creating a new project in Environmental Practices 8 for the 2019-2020 school year whereby students created a video related to population growth and entered it into a contest sponsored by the World of 7 Billion Population Education Association. In two trimesters, 36 EPS students created and entered 18 videos into the contest (students worked in pairs). EPS has four finalists and one first place winner (Artifact CD-12). This is remarkable considering the contest typically has nearly 3,000 entries. Prior to incorporating this video into my curriculum, I consulted with Amis Balcomb who teaches Digital Storytelling which many of the students had taken prior to taking my class. The contest winners expressed that they were inspired to create the video based on information they had learned in Historical Thinking 3. This project truly represented an integration across EPS courses.
- Creating a new project in Scientific Thinking 1 called the Materials Impact Project. This project revolved around the idea that students would get to experience in real life what it’s like to be a scientist, including both researching and presenting their information to other scientists. This project replaced a history/science 6th grade collaboration that had been in place before I came to EPS and was proving too complicated to implement. I created this new project in winter of 2019 and then expanded it in 2020 to collaborate with the 10th graders (Artifact Ped-9). During an observation, Malcolm Yates noted how I related the students’ experience to that of real scientists as follows:
○ “Krissy keeps pointing out to students in what ways this similar tomorrow and different from a real academic or professional scientific conference, e.g.
* “Feel free to stand-up and quietly stretch your legs in the back, this is common at an academic conference”
* “I know you all have a lot of questions we don’t have enough time for all them. At a conference, a lot of the most interesting conversations between the scientists take place breaks and social events — feel free to ask a question you didn’t get to outside of class.” - Suggesting to Middle School Head Sam Uzwack that the name of Environmental Practices-8 Global Challenges be changed to Environmental Practices-8 Global Solutions to be more positive in nature (Artifact CD-13).
Future Practice
My main focus in the curriculum and discipline design practice in the coming years will be to learn more about teaching methodologies particular to the science discipline. Two things I plan to do to improve in this area are:
- To regularly read the National Science Teaching Association newsletters and emails I frequently receive and consider attending an upcoming conference.
- Engage in more frequent discussions with my discipline colleagues regarding recommendations for best practices particular to science. After our first discipline meeting in the 2020-2021 school year, I will create a list of topics of interest and begin to engage in those conversations as appropriate.