JoinPLI #1
National Conference in Kansas City • Oct. 25-28, 2023
Full-Day Workshop
OpenSciEd Middle School
Revealing Students' Brilliance
Preconference • Wednesday, October 25 • 8:15 AM - 3:30 PM
Facilitator: Whitney Mills and Tommy Clayton
All participants will receive...
- Complimentary lunch
- Coffee and tea (first come, first serve)
$150
Conference registration is required to attend.
Sponsored by:
In Partnership With:
About the Session
Come join us to see how OpenSciEd’s materials can help you reveal your students’ brilliance. The first full day of the professional learning institute (PLI) will simultaneously prepare you to teach the first unit in the OpenSciEd middle school program and provide the support you need to advance your practice so that learning is both driven by student questions and leads to the foundational science learning they need to be successful. To do this, this session will put teachers in the student’s seat so they can feel what it's like to be a student whose thoughts and questions are valued in the drive to figure out puzzling phenomena. We actually do science together with the facilitator acting as the "teacher" and then dig in to help you see the coherence across the program and the details in the first units you will be teaching.
Whitney Mills
Whitney Mills is a curriculum writer and professional learning facilitator at BSCS Science Learning.Prior to writing on middle and high school OpenSciEd units, Whitney taught middle school science using Next Gen Storylines and OpenSciEd units in USD 262 and USD 512. Whitney has a passion for helping students make sense of their world and guiding educators to aid their students in this process. Whitney has a B.S. in Education from Pittsburg State University and an M.Ed. in Learning and Instructional Design from Wichita State University.
Tommy Clayton
Tommy Clayton is a middle school teacher with 11 years of experience in the classroom. He currently teaches 8th grade in NJ and has been utilizing the OpenSciEd curriculum for the last 5 years. Tommy was a pilot teacher as well as a development consultant on several of the OpenSciEd Middle School units. In 2019 Tommy joined the OpenSciEd Facilitator Team where he currently supports teachers using the OpenSciEd materials. In addition to facilitating professional learning events, he is also helping to develop materials for the integration of OpenSciEd with Google Classroom. During the 2022-2023 school year, Tommy is filming his classroom which will be used by BSCS to further improve OpenSciEd Professional Learning materials. Having the opportunity to work on both sides of the curriculum gives Tommy unique insights and experiences that he hopes to share with teachers and students on a national level.