What makes you believe a student teacher is going to make an excellent teacher one day?
– J., Ohio

I looked for several things in student teachers to indicate they were on the right track:

• Cared about their students. First and foremost, remember that you are teaching children and young adults. Be caring and flexible.
• Thoughtful preparation. Nothing will destroy a lesson faster than a lack of planning.
• Reflective and self-assessing. Student teachers should ask themselves these questions: How did that class go? What were the students doing? Did they understand my lesson? How do I know? How can I be sure? What is the next step? How could I have done the lesson three different ways?
• Had vision. They could describe what their perfect classroom looks like. What’s happening? What are the students doing? What are they doing? What’s being accomplished. This vision will help guide all their decision making.
• Participated in the school community. Teachers have to work together and should become integral parts of the school environment.
• Would admit when they didn’t know something. Don’t ever try to bluff your way through a question. Model that you’re a life-long learner and find the answers or have the students find the answers.
• Exhibit passion for the subject and teaching.

Things I do not consider important:

• Create all their own lessons and handouts from scratch. They still had to do thoughtful preparation by analyzing everything they wanted to use.
• Be content geniuses.
• Be friends with the students. Caring and befriending are not the same.
• Have perfect lessons. Near impossible.

Hope this helps!

Welcome to 2019. As of January 3, Congressional leaders and President Trump are still working on a final agreement on FY2019 spending and the federal government remains closed for business. As you will recall, federal education funding, including programs at the U.S. Department of Education, is not affected by this current shutdown.  The full-year appropriations bill for education H.R. 6157 (115) will fund the Department of Education programs, including Title II and Title IVA, through next September.  

So looking ahead, what can we expect from federal lawmakers and the federal agencies in 2019?

Reauthorization of the Higher Education Act (HEA) may happen this year, largely because Senator Lamar Alexander, the top Republican on the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) , has announced he will not seek re-election in 2020.

Senator Alexander has served as the secretary of education under former President George H. W. Bush, as governor of Tennessee, and as president of the University of Tennessee. He was one of the key architects of the Every Student Succeeds Act and has a reputation for reaching across the aisle and working with Democratic colleagues. Many believe he will make reauthorization of the HEA a priority and move the bill forward in the coming months.

HEA reauthorization in the Senate went nowhere in the last Congress, and a Republican bill last year in the House to reauthorize the legislation failed to garner any Democratic support and did not come up for a floor vote.

Rep Bobby Scott, incoming chair of the House Education and Labor Committee (recently renamed from the Education and Workforce Committee), has indicated that HEA is also a priority for him and that he is willing to work with Senate colleagues to get the legislation passed.  

Earlier in December during remarks to the American Council on Education, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos stated that “Like all of education, higher education is due for a rethink.”  The Secretary released the administration’s white paper on higher education  which includes broad goals for an overhaul of higher education policy in 2019.

Many also believe that Congressional Democrats and Republicans could work together in 2019 on a massive infrastructure bill that would include schools/education.  Rep. Scott’s infrastructure bill—Rebuild America’s Schools Act, (H.R. 2475 (115)—would create a $70 billion grant program and $30 billion tax credit bond program for high-poverty schools.

Also in 2019 look for work on rulemaking, as an ED panel begins work to rewrite federal regulations around college accreditation, religious schools and nontraditional education providers; and the Departments final rule for Title IX outlining how schools should handle allegations of sexual assault.

School Safety Report Issued December 18

The school safety advisory panel, formed by President Trump after the school shooting in Parkland, Fla. and led by Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, issued their report in mid-December. The 177-page report provides information on 93 best practices and policy recommendations for improving safety at schools nationwide.

As expected, the report criticized the “Rethink School Discipline” Guidance issued during the Obama Administration that placed an emphasis on tracking school disciplinary actions by race and largely intended to end minority students’ more frequent expulsions and suspensions from schools.

The commission found the guidance “likely had a strong, negative impact on school discipline and safety.”  Conservatives have long viewed the guidance as a burden and possibly dangerous for its potential to keep violent children in school. Civil rights groups and Democrats have vehemently complained that the administration would connect the guidance with school shootings.

The panel also encouraged more coordination between schools and law enforcement that could include programs that arm highly trained school personnel. It did not address if firearm purchases should be subjected to age restrictions.

The school safety panel also denounced the prevalence of violence in video games and movies, social media, music and more.  The report says “it is estimated that depictions of violence are present in 90 percent of movies, 68 percent of video games, 60 percent of television shows, and 15 percent of music videos,” noting that “violent content is ubiquitous across these platforms and continues to grow.”  The panel report also notes the conflicting research on the influence violent media actually has on children.

Rep. Bobby Scott, chair of the House education panel, said in a statement that the report “promotes a longstanding, conservative agenda to undermine policies that protect students’ civil rights” and was not a “serious or good-faith effort” to make schools safer.

Sen. Patty Murray, the ranking Democrat on the Senate HELP Committee, said of the report that “The gun industry itself could not have written a more blatant and obvious distraction from the real problem gun violence poses to students across our country,”

Senate Confirms New Head of OSTP

And finally, after a nomination hearing in late August, the Senate confirmed Dr. Kelvin Droegemeier on January 2 to be the next Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP). More here.

Stay tuned, and watch for more updates in future issues of NSTA Express.

Jodi Peterson is the Assistant Executive Director of Communication, Legislative & Public Affairs for the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) and Chair of the STEM Education Coalition. Reach her via e-mail at jpeterson@nsta.org or via Twitter at @stemedadvocate.

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

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There are times when educators miss opportunities to support young children’s interest in exploring and  learning about natural phenomena. We might be otherwise engaged, too focused on the next activity, or uncomfortable with what is happening. We might be talking with one child while another eagerly tries to tell us about a bird flying by, or we don’t want to pause for a minute and listen to the firetruck going past, or get too close to that small animal. Sometimes a child uses too many materials or a child’s actions lead to an undesirable amount of cleanup, such as when a child squeezes and squeezes the glue bottle until there is a huge puddle of glue on the paper and the bottle is empty and then reaches for another bottle. Sometimes the school system requirements don’t include teaching science for any amount of time. 

How do we get better at facilitating meaningful explorations so children have first hand experiences and conversations to help them make sense of the natural phenomena they encounter? How can we incorporate math and language and literacy learning so children develop the skills they need to discuss and communicate about their experiences?

Supportive communities for teaching science in the early childhood years can be found online. The National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) position statements support educators in advocating for the time we need to develop our own learning as well as to teach science in our early childhood classrooms. These statements can be shared with colleagues, administrators, and policy makers to make them aware of the support needed for quality science education. The NSTA Learning Center forums give us a place to ask questions and share strategies and resources that make it possible for us to teach. For NSTA members, the listservs provide a responsive community we can access through email with questions and shared guidance. The NSTA journal, Science and Children publishes educator experiences and reviews of resources. The National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) publishes science education articles in journals and has an interest forum, the Early Childhood Science Interest Forum (ECSIF), that organizes conference sessions, holds meetings, and posts on the NAEYC social media site Hello.

 Webinars, or online conversations, can help you build a community of science-interested educators when you take notes of the ideas that you want to try and resources to look up, and watch with colleagues, then hold a discussion to gain more insight into the ideas presented. I presented one of the modules in the 11-part Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) in Early Learning Series from the Preschool Development Grant, and just watched two from the LinkEngineering Educator Exchange: Building Literacy with PK-2 Engineering Experiences, and Playful Learning: Make Engineering Fun.

I’d love to hear about the communities that support your science learning and science teaching!

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, April 1944.  After many years of discussion, two separate associations—The American Science Teachers Association and the American Council of Science Teachers — proposed and adopted a constitution that merged their members and joined their forces to organize as one national group for science education. By the end of 1944, the seed that had been planted broke through the surface and emerged as the National Science Teachers Association. Its founding purpose to “stimulate, improve, and coordinate science teaching at the elementary, secondary, and collegiate levels of instruction.”

There is no doubt that since its inception, the importance of science teaching and science learning has been the driving focus of the association. The ongoing need for this driving force has been society as a whole and the need to provide students with instruction that helped to understand scientific and technological advances of the time. Robert Carleton penned the following at the 25^th anniversary: “The challenge to NSTA and to the profession is to tie science education together with the lives of people and the problems of society in a truly functional manner.” As science educators we have the ability to make connections between new advances and everyday life, influence the future, and to extend the reach of science to many.

At our 50^th anniversary, then President Gerry Madrazo likened our Association to a giant Sequoia which has grown slowly by planting deep roots, and reaching wide but had yet to realize the fullness of the tree’s expanse. The challenge to tie people’s lives and science together and need for us to continue to develop and expand our reach still exists! Throughout the last 75 years, NSTA has weathered many changes from programmatic offerings to the location of our headquarters to changes in our governance structure to the overall manner in which we engage with our members and meet their needs. These events, strategies, and changes offered opportunities to interact with our members and look towards the future of science education and the growth of our association. While history provides us context, the future provides us promise.

NSTA has become the largest organization in the world devoted to the science teaching and learning and at its core has always been our mission statement “…to promote excellence and innovation in science teaching and learning for all.” Like the Sequoia, we have grown with time and arrive at a new era where our historical roots are deep and there is strength in our message. Our potential reach and growth still hold promise by modifying our strategies to meet the future of science education and needs of our members.  

Join us throughout 2019 as we uncover and reveal some of the new features of NSTAs digital presence and overall engagement strategy. As we look to the past with an eye to the future, it is clear that the science taught and need for science educators who create a love of learning and interest in students is as necessary today as it was in 1944. 

How, we engage ALL students in science learning and ensure that all science educators continue their own lifelong, lifewide, and lifedeep learning process is the focus for our future growth. With that goal in mind, the voice of the science teacher and need for all educators to advocate and speak out for science education is more prominent than ever before.

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

Future NSTA Conferences

2019 National Conference
St. Louis, April 11–14

2019 STEM Forum & Expo
San Francisco, July 24–26

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