OK, I admit it. I’m crazy. Standing in the registration area at 6:45 IN THE MORNING (!) at the NSTA National Conference on Science Education in Nashville, I was handing out postcards (OK, it was more like hawking at a sporting event) advertising the National Middle Level Science Teachers Association’s “Meet Me in The Middle Day” on Saturday. I’m calling out, “Middle school science teachers? Anyone a middle school science teacher?” Some pretended they didn’t hear me (I’m used to that teaching middle schoolers.) and some gave me “that look.” You know it. The “Do I LOOK crazy?” look. Some came right out and said, “I’m not that crazy.” or “Thank goodness I got out of there last year.” The greatest, however, were the people that raised their hands (Yes, actually raised their hand!) and said, “Me! I am!” with a huge smile on their face. My people. The special, caught in the middle people. Middle level—the place that I love with people I enjoy being with (at least most of the time). I feel like a kid in a candy store when it comes to “Meet Me in the Middle” day. I mean, A WHOLE DAY JUST FOR US! Where else can you talk to people that understand your job, meet folks from around the country, compare notes, get some already tested ideas to use on Monday when you’re back at school, and maybe even win a door prize?!?! (I’m not that lucky.)

Probably my absolute favorite part of the day is the Share-a-thon that happens in the afternoon. I love walking up and down the aisles (more than once, I admit) full of lessons, ideas, and freebies (I love freebies!). Everywhere I looked people were smiling and having a good time. Hands and bags were carrying ‘treasures’ they had found. People were doing labs, playing games, learning about a different way to present a concept. (Did you know you can make a cloud in a 2-litre bottle using a bicycle pump, a stopper and some rubbing alcohol? Or how about putting UV sensitive beads bags, rubbing different brands of sunscreen on the bags, exposing the bags to light and then relating it to wearing sunscreen and skin cancer? Or learning about contests that can be part of I/E time, Genius Hour or differentiation in the classroom? Or the authentic ways to combine ELA and science? How about a classroom you can collaborate with?) You get the idea. I could go on and on but I know you have assignments to check.

You can be a part of this. It’s happening in Los Angeles at the NSTA conference next year. You have an idea to share (Really, you do!) and you will walk away with new friends and new ideas to use in your classroom. And you’ll know that middle school teacher crazy is the best kind of crazy there is to be.

Author Peggy Perdue is on the board of directors of the National Middle Level Science Teachers Association

Get more involved with NSTA!

Join today and receive Science Scope, the peer-reviewed journal just for middle school teachers; connect on the middle level science teaching list (members can sign up on the list server); or consider joining your peers for Meet Me in the Middle Day (MMITM) at the National Conference on Science Education in Los Angeles in the spring of 2017.

The mission of NSTA is to promote excellence and innovation in science teaching and learning for all.

Future NSTA Conferences

5th Annual STEM Forum & Expo, hosted by NSTA

• Denver, Colorado: July 27–29

2017 Area Conferences

• Baltimore, Maryland: October 5–7
• Milwaukee, Wisconsin: November 9–11
• New Orleans, Louisiana: November 30–December 2

National Conferences

• Los Angeles, California: March 30–April 2, 2017
• Atlanta, Georgia: March 15–18, 2018
• St. Louis, Missouri: April 11–14, 2019
• Boston, Massachusetts: March 26–29, 2020
• Chicago, Illinois: April 8–11, 2021

2016 and 2017 NGSS Workshops

• Discover the NGSS, October 2016, November 2016, March 2017
• NGSS Summer Institute, Reno, July 15

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Based on Interviews With Professionals Using Science in the Workplace

National Eye Institute/NIH

Medical scientists conduct laboratory experiments to try to find answers to difficult medical problems while also applying their knowledge to treat patients in a clinical setting. Brian Brooks is an ophthalmologist who specializes in vision problems associated with coloboma and albinism. He is chief of the Unit of Genetic and Developmental Eye Disease at the National Eye Institute, which is part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Maryland.

Work Overview

I do lab work to understand how children and adults go blind and determine how to treat their eye diseases. Coloboma is a rare disorder that can cause children to have keyhole-shaped pupils and that can block signals from the retina and optic nerve to the brain and cause blindness. We don’t know why it occurs or if it can be prevented. To look for underlying genetic causes for the disease, we examine patients and their first-degree relatives and sequence their genes. Everyone has mutations, or “misspellings” in their genetic code. We try to separate the disease-causing misspellings from the benign ones that we all carry.

It’s difficult to figure out cause and effect. If our research team can locate a genetic misspelling, we can try to predict whether it is harmful to that gene. We know we’re on the right track if we start to see the same pattern in more than one unrelated family. We also look at the effects of changing the genetics of mice and zebrafish. Mice are mammals like us, and their genetics are particularly well understood, whereas zebrafish develop very fast, and their eyes are transparent when they are young. So we use the fish to test our hypotheses, to see which ones are worth further testing in mice or in a cell culture. The work involves a lot of data crunching.

Dr. Brooks examines an eye patient at the National Institutes of Health.

I’m also researching potential treatments for albinism, a condition that leads to abnormalities in vision development due to reduced melanin. If the condition can be identified at birth and treated, it might improve the person’s vision. We first looked at drugs used to treat other conditions. We then tested a drug called NTBC that might interact with the body’s melanin-production pathway in mice with albinism and also in cell cultures. It corrected some features of albinism in the mice. Now, we have permission to conduct a pilot study in five adults with this particular type of albinism to see whether it affects their melanin levels.

Career Highlights

I went to the White House to receive a Presidential Early Career Award in Science and Engineering a few years ago. Another highlight was receiving tenure at the National Eye Institute.

Career Path

I started in electrical engineering at the University of Maryland, but I also took several biology and chemistry courses. I soon realized that I was more interested in using engineering as a tool in biology and switched my major to biochemistry.

What I found most appealing was the intersection of science and medicine, so I went on to get a combined MD and PhD degree. I decided to specialize in ophthalmology, a field with many unanswered questions. Blindness exists in many forms, and for many of them there are no good treatments.

I did my residency in ophthalmology with a subspecialty in pediatric ophthalmology at the University of Michigan. Then I got a fellowship to work on medical genetics at the NIH. When the fellowship ended, I stayed on as a staff member at the NIH.

Knowledge, Skills, and Training Needed

You should be inquisitive, because you have to combine elements from different areas of science and engineering to accomplish goals. Be patient, because not all hypotheses lead to results. Also, become good at writing and public speaking, because if you can’t communicate your findings effectively, your work will be hard to understand.

Advice for Students

The only thing that will keep you going is a love for science and medicine. It’s very helpful to take basic science, computer science, and some engineering courses. Also try to get some lab experience. Every step of the way, work on your ability to communicate your understanding of science to others, either by taking writing classes or by taking science classes that require writing or giving presentations.

Bonus Points

Brooks’s education:
BS in biochemistry from the University of Maryland; MD and PhD in biochemistry from the University of Pennsylvania.

On the web:
http://irp.nih.gov/pi/brian-brooks

Related occupations:
Optometrist, orthoptist, nurse, genetic counselor, biologist, and lab technician.

Editor’s Note

This article was originally published in the April/May 2016 issue of The Science Teacher journal from the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA).

Get Involved With NSTA!

Join NSTA today and receive The Science Teacher, the peer-reviewed journal just for high school teachers; to write for the journal, see our Author Guidelines and Call for Papers; connect on the high school level science teaching list (members can sign up on the list server); or consider joining your peers at future NSTA conferences.

The mission of NSTA is to promote excellence and innovation in science teaching and learning for all.

Future NSTA Conferences

5th Annual STEM Forum & Expo, hosted by NSTA

• Denver, Colorado: July 27–29

2017
Area Conferences

• Baltimore, Maryland: October 5–7
• Milwaukee, Wisconsin: November 9–11
• New Orleans, Louisiana: November 30–December 2

National Conferences

• Los Angeles, California: March 30–April 2, 2017
• Atlanta, Georgia: March 15–18, 2018
• St. Louis, Missouri: April 11–14, 2019
• Boston, Massachusetts: March 26–29, 2020
• Chicago, Illinois: April 8–11, 2021

Follow NSTA

The powerful learning that comes of getting together with others who are interested in the same topic can lead to action that increases opportunities for all children to engage in science and engineering explorations. Let’s not leave out using technology and mathematics since these areas of learning are so intertwined with the S and E that they are often referred to as “STEM” learning. Hearing about the work of others also lifts my spirits when I’m feeling that early childhood science education could be so much more effective and widespread than it is.

I had the opportunity to attend two such gatherings with education professionals who have been in the classroom and field much longer than I have: the National Science Teachers Association’s 2016 national conference March 31-April 3, and the White House Early Learning STEM Symposium, held on April 21 in partnership with the U. S. Department of Education, U. S. Department of Health and Human Services and Invest In US.

The White House Early Learning STEM Symposium partners include Invest in US (organized by the First Five Years fund), the Heising-Simons Foundation and the National Association for the Education of Young Children. The National Science Teachers Association was represented by President Dr. Carolyn Hayes. As Roberto Rodriquez Deputy Assistant to the President for Education said, the administration’s challenge to the country is a “collective call to action to strengthen and support STEM early learning.”

Secretary of Education, John B. King, noted that spending on early childhood education has an 8:1 return on the investment in terms of better long term academic, health, and success in the workforce outcomes. He charged the participants to begin in early childhood to close achievement gaps in education that will help close the diversity gaps the STEM fields by being laser focused on our highest need students and what’s happening in their early learning classrooms.King also spoke about talking with children, noting that they remembered early learning STEM experiences as learning opportunities and joyful experiences: “This work on early learning STEM experiences is not just about ensuring a strong academic foundation; it’s about the joy that comes in learning about, and coming to understand, how the world worked.”

Watch his full speech and the panel discussion on “What Does the Research Say About Early STEM?” in the video of the White House Early Learning STEM Symposium.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iUvEks2tutw[/youtube]

The national NSTA conference in Nashville had so many sessions that I wanted to attend that I could not get to them all. So I turned to the session schedule to see if any of those I could not attend had posted handouts to give me a bit of information about what I missed. 

(Note: if you attended sessions, please help presenters by giving feedback through evaluating the sessions. Go to the conference schedule, search for the sessions you attended and click on the evaluation button at the bottom of each session description.)

I searched for keyword “preschool” because that is the younger end of early childhood education. Then I scrolled through the list to look for any attached handouts. Some of the sessions that come up in that search are listed as for a “General” audience, not always appropriate for preK-grade 2, but still have interesting handouts. I also searched for Kindergarten, because those sessions are less likely to be listed as “General.” Here are two examples of the materials I found:

• Curriculum Examples jpg from Katie Morrison and Deb Chickadel’s Thursday session, Creating a Sticky Curriculum: Integrating Science with Core Academic Subjects in the Preschool and Elementary Classroom.
• Mia Dubosarsky of The STEM Education Center at WPI in Worcester, MA, generously shared materials for her short course, SC-4: Engineering a Story: Integrating Engineering Practices with Literacy. . “Engineering a Story: The integration of engineering practices with literacy” is adapted with permission from Engineering Lens, developed by Bill Wolfson, a wonderful example of how engineers and educators collaborate.  The handouts have many examples of engineering design processes, which will help early childhood teachers understand that there is no single process and that engineering design rarely moves in a linear way.

At the conference I attended an informal meeting of early childhood science educators, including several other members of the NAEYC’s Early Childhood Science Interest Forum. We talked about our individual work and about how to move our communities forward in supporting science education in early childhood settings.

Meeting with other early childhood educators from the classroom next door, the child care provider down the street, or a colleague from another program–I am grateful for all the individual and group meetings that enrich my own practice.