About Me

When I was a kid, I thought everybody was totally fascinated with nature and rocks and the human body. I was Montessori educated for 4 years and in that time I was given the opportunity to explore my love of science. I drove the teachers nuts with "why" questions! In elementary school I exhausted the librarians as they searched for more books in the sciences for me to read, as I quickly read all they had. In middle school all we did was read and we never finished the science books. The best parts, human body stuff, was always at the end. In High school I couldn't wait for my science classes but there too, we just brushed by the human body stuff and had no time for questions. We skipped the dumbed down parts that even touched on chemistry in biology. And as Chemistry class loomed near I began to get scared and I was sure I couldn't do it. I wanted to be a doctor and I knew I had to do well in Chemistry and Physics but one look at the periodic table and I knew I would fail. The Chemistry teacher had a reputation for weeding kids out and sending the most stoic athlete out in tears. NO WAY, not me!! I assumed that maybe I was wrong about Science and that maybe it just looked fun but really isn't.  I changed my career to communications and a few other things but alas, science class was inevitable. And the loved returned!  I avoided Physics and Chemistry and took every other science I could take to become a science teacher. I graduated from UAB in 1991 with a BS in Education/Science. I completed coursework also for K-12 Health Education.

I taught Science in the public schools for 8 years and I was determined to teach the ones who were afraid, learning disabled or in special education, along with other advanced and honors classes. I wanted to give them the passion and fun I had with science. During those years I decided to face my fear of Chemistry and Physics. I enrolled in college Chemistry 1 at our University and waited for the terror. As one day bled into another I waited for it to get hard. I kept waiting for him to teach. When the first test came suddenly, I was scared because I didn't  take notes. When I made an A, effortlessly, I was stunned and angry that I had avoided such an easy subject. As time went on , I lost my fear and was overjoyed at the fun I was having and the realization that it was easy. Chemistry had a bad reputation, one that I set out to destroy. As I went on to take Chem 2 and 3, then Physics 1,2 and 3, I began to realize that something was terribly wrong with the way we teach science. Why was I so capable of Physics and Chemistry and not know it? I wound up in a college Physics 3 class in a 6 hour final exam and I just stopped and looked at myself and what I was doing. Our instructor had taken the exam from an MIT professor to give us. I made the highest grade on that exam and ended my class with a very high "A". ME! I'm not special. I'm normal. 

But I began to realize that I had inadvertentley taught myself what I should have been given all along. That's when I knew what was wrong with the way we teach science.

I knew I had to help my students learn to love science and not to fear it.  In my 9th grade and 10th grade classes full of special ed and learning disabled students, I began teaching them the Chemistry and Physics I knew, without their text books. You can just imagine their surprise when I told them they were learning and doing Chemistry and Physics, some of it at a college level and all of it, more difficult than their text books. 

I have since learned that there is a very wrong way to teach science. The way we were taught, with Chemistry saved for High School, with the elitist attitude toward the "harder" sciences, books that stress content, it is very damaging and not at all the way to show our children how science works.

Once I had my son in 2001, I resigned so I could stay home with him. I took my daughter out of government school in 2003 to home school her. I want to share my love of science with others. I miss teaching and I miss seeing the pride on the faces of those who came scared and went away knowing and loving science.

Email Me

How To Teach Science Workshop