Dear NSTA Colleagues,

As a proud 18-year veteran of a Kindergarten classroom, applying for one of the NSTA awards in 2014 became “LIFE CHANGING.”  I am excited to share my story as an NSTA member whose passion for teaching Kindergarteners and science sent me on a journey of reflection and professional growth.

In 2014, I was selected as the recipient of the NSTA Shell Science Teaching Award. I still get goose bumps typing those words, even to this day.  I am still so humbled to have been chosen because I do not see myself as an outstanding educator.  I do what is best and right for the children in my classroom. My kindergarten students’ favorite part of our day is when I announce that it’s time for science!

How Did an Ordinary Science Teacher Win an Award?

I decided to apply for the Shell Science Teaching Award after I saw a link for it posted on one of our state list-serve e-mails.  I was hoping to become one of the finalists so I could attend NSTA’s national conference and learn some ideas to take back to my classroom.  Walking through the application process was one of the most reflective experiences I’ve ever had.  I examined my teaching from many different viewpoints and from the lens of many colleagues, friends, and parents of former students. One thing that is unique to the Shell Award is that when you are announced as one of the three finalists, a team from the Shell Award Selection committee comes to visit your classroom.  I worried about that day for a week or so and on the morning of the visit, I woke up and felt peace.  I literally walked through that day in what felt like a dream! I organized several groups of colleagues, parents, and administrators to speak with the Shell Award team members about me as a teacher and what happens in my classroom.  I cannot even put into words what it is like to hear all those people who watch what you do everyday speak about you.  I was completely overwhelmed at all the kind, beautiful, wonderful things they said about me! After the visit was over, I went home that evening and just sobbed; it was one of the MOST powerful experiences I have walked through as a professional.  It was LITERALLY life changing.

I never thought that I would be selected as the national recipient! I was brought to tears at school convocation when my Superintendent announced that I was the recipient of the Shell Science Teaching Award. 

After receiving the NSTA award, many new opportunities opened up to me—and still continue to arise. One highlight was being invited to be the keynote speaker at several different conferences to share my experiences as a science educator.  I was also asked to be a trainer for our state science kit initiative and to lead many professional development sessions in my own district as well as within my own state.  I was asked by our Department of Education to help write the K–2 science standards that children and teachers all over Indiana would be using. 

Through the years, I get to speak to principals and teachers from both the US and China about the importance of Science in the early childhood classroom and guide them through hands-on experiences that they can take back to their schools and introduce to their children. As a means to be more involved with NSTA, I’ve applied for NSTA positions: District Director and a Shell Awards team member. Currently, I’m the Elementary Director for our state Science association and have just submitted my application to run for Vice-President. Beyond the classroom, three museums in Indiana have invited me to sit on their executive boards and thereby influence the patrons who attend events and activities there. I have also served as a member of the Shell Science Teaching Awards team and have reviewed each application over the last 3 years from some incredible educators!

My professional network expanded along with the opportunities I shared above.  I thoroughly enjoy participating in chats on Twitter and help to host a chat for teachers on the first Tuesday of each month (#TeacherFriends) in which we discuss topics relevant to education. I also join in the #NSTAchat as often as I can and learn all about topics that are related to science education from some incredible educators. I communicate regularly with friends I have made through NSTA and have been invited to provide feedback on several of their books before they were published. 

Through all of these experiences, I was encouraged by colleagues and friends to apply for other NSTA awards and I was excited to receive the Robert E. Yager Excellence in Science Teaching Award earlier this year at the NSTA National Conference in Atlanta.

So, if you have ever thought about applying for an NSTA award, now is the time! I have grown so much as a professional educator because of the application process, and I can assure you that you will too. When you add in all of the opportunities that have been presented to me, I can truly say that receiving an NSTA award is LIFE CHANGING!

Maybe an NSTA award isn’t in your immediate future, but you may still want to learn more about NSTA awards (and consider telling your teacher friends about them).  Applying for an NSTA award is not as intimidating as it may seem!  There is a friendly Awards staff ready to help answer any of your questions along with the countless recipients of past NSTA awards. You will learn about opportunities that allow you to grow as a professional and ways that you can become involved with NSTA in other ways.  I would also encourage you to apply for being a member of one of the awards selection committees for an NSTA award.  This is a great way to learn more about the criteria for each award and what the committee looks for in the application process.

Kristen Poindexter
Kindergarten Teacher

Indianapolis, Indiana

Twitter handle: @fuzzlady77

E-Mail: kpoindexter@msdwt.k12.in.us

As the author of the NSTA Press book Exemplary Evidence: Scientists and Their Data, elementary science educator and guest blogger Jessica Fries-Gaither has an excellent understanding of how scientists identify ideas that are supported by evidence. Exemplary Evidence describes the wide variety of what counts as data–from observations to measurements to lab results–and the many different ways that scientists collected, worked with and used that data. Fries-Gaither also wrote a book for younger children, the NSTA Kids book Notable Notebooks: Scientists and Their Writings. 

As Fries-Gaither tells students at the end of the book:

Data supports conclusions; it can change people’s minds;

It is used to build theories that help humankind.

Scientists all along have known this to be true: Data is powerful!

Now, what will yours do?

 Welcome Jessica!

November 5-9 is the 4^th Annual U.S. Media Literacy Week, hosted by the National Association for Media Literacy Education (NAMLE). Celebrated across the United States (and in conjunction with Canada’s National Media Literacy Week), the goal is to highlight the importance of media literacy in education. NAMLE defines media literacy as “the ability to ACCESS, ANALYZE, EVALUATE, CREATE, and ACT using all forms of communication.” The organization shares that media literacy, “empowers people to be critical thinkers and makers, effective communicators, and active citizens.”

As early childhood science educators, we have an important role to play in the development of media literate students. The eight Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) Science and Engineering Practices that guide our work with young children overlap with NAMLE’s definition of media literacy, particularly in Practice 7: Engaging in Argument from Evidence. In the primary years, this practice builds on prior experiences and includes comparing different ideas and representations about the natural and designed world(s). NGSS Performance expectations in this area for K-2 students include:

• Identify arguments that are supported by evidence.
• Distinguish between explanations that account for all gathered evidence and those that do not.
• Analyze why some evidence is relevant to a scientific question and some is not.
• Distinguish between opinions and evidence in one’s own explanations.
• Listen actively to arguments to indicate agreement or disagreement based on evidence, and/or to retell the main points of the argument.
• Construct an argument with evidence to support a claim.
• Make a claim about the effectiveness of an object, tool, or solution that is supported by relevant evidence.

Young children are quite capable of engaging in such work; however, they need support and appropriate instruction to generate *claims and support them with evidence. As with students of any age, a thoughtful instructional sequence helps them to do so. You might choose to read aloud an excerpt from NSTA Press’s new book, Exemplary Evidence: Scientists and Their Data and discuss how scientists need to have evidence to support their ideas. I suggest reading about Maria Merian, who was able to make claims about the life cycle of insects using evidence she gathered while observing and painting insects over the course of time. You will also want to explain that a claim is a conclusion or an answer to a question (what you think you know). A claim must have evidence to support it, much like a detective would use clues to solve a mystery. 

After an introduction, students are ready to practice generating claims and evidence. We have asked students to watch short video clips of animals from Arkive, such as this video of an iguana eating a flower. Afterwards, ask students to make a claim about what animals need to survive, using evidence from the video. As you can see in the photo, this second grade student correctly claimed that animals need food to survive and used the video as evidence. This exercise can be repeated several times with different videos of animals, or firsthand observations of local animals in the schoolyard, helping students gain proficiency in generating claims and supporting them with evidence. As the year progresses, students can continue to support claims with evidence following hands-on investigations.

Supporting claims with evidence is a skill that transcends curricular areas, and you may soon finding your students using the language in other disciplines! How might this fit into your social studies instruction? Math? Language arts? The more opportunities we provide for students to think critically, the closer we are to achieving NAMLE’s goal of media literate students. 

*To learn more about claims, evidence, reasoning, and argument, see Eric Brunsell’s blog post, Designing Science Inquiry: Claim + Evidence + Reasoning = Explanation.

Jason, is this big enough?” My seventh-grade teacher asked me about the text on the whiteboard, in front of the entire class. Much to my horror, she continued to ask this repeatedly for what felt like the rest of the year. As a middle school student who had suddenly become aware of pretty girls and how big my glasses were, the last thing I wanted was to be asked constantly about whether I could actually see what was on the whiteboard. She had good intentions, but it was the first time I realized some people didn’t know how to deal with my disability.

The road from embarrassed seventh grader to earning a computer engineering degree, to Microsoft senior project manager, to an American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)-Lemelson Invention Ambassador has not been smooth. We know that so many children lose interest in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) in early adolescence, and we lose many more young adults as they progress through our educational system.

I can attest to the fact that the pathway for children with disabilities is especially filled with obstacles. My success in STEM has made me acutely aware of this, so I am passionate about supporting an interest in STEM for persons with disabilities so they can leverage technology to become the world’s next STEM leaders and innovators.

I was born with ocular albinism, resulting in uncorrectable vision of 20/80 and 20/200. My parents worked extremely hard to get me the accommodations I needed to succeed, and very closely with teachers to ensure they knew how to work with me. Seventh grade was different because I had so many teachers that my parents couldn’t work as closely with them all. While teachers were “aware” of my problems, they had very different ways of handling my disability:

• Those who over-accommodated. As I said earlier, these teachers constantly needed affirmation and often “coddled” me.
• Those who under-accommodated. Often these teachers behaved like stereotypical “tough guy” physical education teachers who either didn’t think I needed help or perhaps thought I just needed to “toughen up.”
• Those who got it “just right.” Teachers who talked to me before or after class, privately, and understood the social horrors of middle school could be exacerbated with a disability. They supported me, but had the same expectations of success for the rest of the class.

As adult and a parent, I’ve begun to appreciate all of the work and stress teachers experience each thankless day. (My sister has taught young students, so I’ve witnessed it all firsthand.) Preparing for everything involved in teaching—including helping students with disabilities succeed—is a job I can’t imagine doing, but I’m so appreciative of the top-notch teachers I had. Without their help, I never would have been able to pursue a STEM degree and career. However, we know students with disabilities are significantly more unlikely to simply graduate high school, much less pursue a degree or job in STEM. 

All students of all abilities can successfully learn STEM and pursue STEM careers. Though awareness of issues of diversity and equity related to gender and ethnicity has become more widespread, disabilities often are not part of the diversity and inclusion conversations. My goal in this blog post, and in life, is to encourage students to pursue STEM, parents to realize their children’s potential, and teachers to support and guide students with disabilities to pursue STEM degrees and careers.

Partnering With Parents

Generally, parents must be the ones to arrange accommodations for students with disabilities. I was extremely lucky to have my parents advocating for me to have larger-print books, low-vision tools, and help in the classroom. If a student appears to have a disability (physical or learning) and it’s unclear if they have any assistance, it’s best to reach out directly to the parents. 

As with many things, this can be a delicate process. Rather than assuming you know the answers, ask questions to see if the student has been evaluated by a specialist. For example, students with low vision  can be examined by specialists who can evaluate and prescribe based on their needs.

Typically students will already have been evaluated by an ophthalmologist, but sometimes that isn’t enough. My doctor was one of the best eye surgeons in the country, but he didn’t believe in many forms of low-vision accessibility solutions. As a result, my parents didn’t know about all of the available technology until I was in 10th grade, technology that I could have used in the classroom to make life easier or to use to drive. It’s important for teachers to connect with parents early on and inform them of available resources.

Strong Expectations With Strong Support

As I mentioned, some teachers over-accommodated and had lower expectations for me. Ironically, I had more teachers expecting less of me than teachers who didn’t think I needed help. Remember that students with disabilities can accomplish any set of goals, but may need a different way to do so, such as having more time for tests or assignments, showing their progress in a different way , or receiving additional assistance.

One of the biggest mistakes is to steer students with disabilities to “easier” education pathways. If more students with disabilities pursue STEM and are given appropriate challenging assignments, they’ll pave the way for others in the future and may even change the world because of their unique abilities. I’ll share an example of this.

I met a young girl who was legally blind and wanted to pursue a degree in mathematics at Virginia Tech. After describing all the tough obstacles she had already overcome in high school, she asked me bluntly, “Do you think I’ll be able to get my degree?” I emphatically said, “Yes,” but allowed it wouldn’t be easy. Four years later, she earned her degree.

As professors and peers worked with her, they experienced math in a new way because of her. They learned calculus in three dimensions, and literally felt math in new ways as they experienced graphing with braille. This led to some incredible new ways to teach math and some breakthroughs for math theses that would not have happened without her.

Finding the Right Balance

Unfortunately, I don’t have an obvious answer regarding how much support to give students with disabilities. But I’ll conclude with one more higher education story about a professor who told another student who was blind that she couldn’t participate in a mountain climbing class. The professor did not want the student to get hurt, but after she pushed hard enough, she was allowed to participate. She fell and received many scrapes, but by the end of the class, she was moving the fastest of all the students and even participating in competitions. The professor observed, “I was both afraid I couldn’t help her be successful, and afraid of her failing. She taught me how to be a better teacher by realizing the easier road isn’t the road where we learn the most.”

I believe our future is bright because of amazing teachers, and I believe students with disabilities can change the world, especially in STEM. To succeed, they’ll need your support and encouragement to pursue hard work, but that’s not new to you: It’s exactly what you’re great at, and we can’t thank you enough for doing it all.

Jason Grieves, a senior program manager at Microsoft, empowers persons with disabilities by inventing solutions to help them change the world. Grieves believes supporting persons with disabilities to live, work, and play in new ways will allow a new generation to leverage technology to become the world’s next leaders and innovators. During his 10 years with Microsoft, he has introduced new accessible technology for persons with visual impairments; improved software typing on phones for everyone, including those with mobility impairments; and built innovative personal health and fitness solutions that energize people to change their lives and improve their health. He also spent a year at technology startup Katalyst developing a new technology to enable persons with visual, hearing, and mobility impairments to exercise smarter and more efficiently.

Grieves’ passion for accessibility and empowering others stems from his own visual disability. He was born with optic nerve damage in both eyes. Through a life-changing event—meeting a young girl who was completely blind—and with incredible support from his family and friends, he began helping persons with disabilities in high school. He spent one summer preparing a kindergarten teacher, computer, and classroom for a new student who had a similar visual impairment. When he saw the student successfully using the computer and learning from the teacher in front of the class, he knew he had found his calling.

Grieves currently holds 11 patents.

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