Greenback School field trip show

A single 90-minute class last week at Greenback School held lessons for three groups of students. High school algebra students brought their math skills and chemistry students their science knowledge, while master’s degree candidates from Maryville College observed how to bring learning to life.

The college students took the field trip to Greenback on the second day of their yearlong program, to gain real-life experience before the K-12 school year wraps up. When classes resume late this summer for kids, the adults will be at the front of the room as teachers for the first of two semesters of clinical practice. They may be the teacher of record while completing their program or work with another teacher.

The four graduate students were able to see and participate in the integrated math and science lesson at Greenback. “That’s how we want them to teach when they get their job, to integrate the disciplines, to make it more relevant for the students,” said Cynthia Gardner, who chairs MC’s Division of Education and accompanied the students to Greenback. The new teachers are being trained to “break down the walls of the classroom” and work across disciplines, she said.

Maryville just graduated its first cohort of four in the Master of Arts in Teaching Secondary STEM program, which is designed to help fill the need for high school math and science teachers. They may earn a master’s in secondary biology, secondary chemistry or secondary mathematics with an emphasis on science, technology, engineering and math.

Doug Davis, now a chemistry lecturer at the college, said he was looking for that type of program when he transitioned careers and had to go to Colorado at the time. He enjoyed working with teenagers and decided to give up a career in industry to teach high school before joining MC last year. “I was really good at what I did and thought I could pass some of this excitement on,” David said of his decision to switch careers.

“I reached a point where I was managing buildings and budgets and not doing a lot of science,” he said. One of the benefits of Maryville’s program, Davis said, is it shortens the time between paychecks for people changing careers, particularly with the job-embedded option, where they start as the teacher of record after just a few months.

Dating game

Last week’s lesson by Greenback chemistry teacher Gabriela Tallent and algebra teacher Kelly Bailey covered concepts such as carbon dating and exponential decay. In a simulation with the fictional element of “diceum,” groups of students shook dice in a plastic container, removing those that came up with a 1 after each round and recording the data before graphing it.

Tallent and Bailey connected what students were discovering to real life, mentioning the Manhattan Project, the accidents at the Chernobyl and Fukushima nuclear plants, France’s reliance on nuclear power and the carbon dating of the Shroud of Turin. Tallent, who grew up in Romania and was a chemical engineer before she became a teacher, linked Chernobyl to today’s news by noting how close it is to Kiev. They also talked about the positive use of radioactive isotopes in areas such as medical imaging.

The Greenback educators know students question why they have to learn things, so they include real-life applications. “We can show them that what they are learning, even in Algebra I, does pertain to the real world,” Bailey said, and understanding it is important for more than earning a grade.

“The kids want to do science, do math,” she said. “We all know that kids learn by doing.” Instead of giving the students a formula, the teachers led them to discovering the formula for calculating half-life of a radioactive isotope.

The teachers also sprinkled in familiar references. Tallent mentioned Neyland Stadium while talking about the electron cloud, and Bailey described the curve that resulted on students’ graphs of exponential decay as looking like a skateboard ramp.

Flexible learning

MC student Katy May had worked at the Boys & Girls Club while earning her bachelor’s degree in biochemistry. After going into health care administration, she said, “I really missed the one-on-one time with the students.”

When the new school year starts she’ll be a sixth grade science teacher at Gresham Middle School.

With a small cohort Maryville College is able to be flexible and offer hybrid learning and work around schedules in the MAT program. Fall professional development evening sessions are designed to be able to respond to what the students discover they need once they have been in the classroom for a month and half.

The graduate students were so attentive last week that they even noticed how deftly Tallent handled a student with a paper airplane, so neither of them disrupted the lesson.