Teacher Appreciation Week

I’ve had so many good teachers in my life. Three, Mrs. Franks, Dave Marsh, and Professor O.Roger Anderson, stand out in one particular way – they all pushed me to the point of failure and then helped me back up.

Mrs. Franks, who taught 4^th grade science at Willard Elementary School, was the first science teacher I ever had. I’m sure I took science up to that point, but she did experiments, led us on field trips, and generally took science from “play in the mud and memorize vocabulary” to a stepwise cycle of exploration and analysis.

I remember getting so frustrated at my bean sprout in a bag experiment because no matter what direction I placed the bag, the sprout always grew up towards the ceiling. I also remember throwing a temper tantrum (remember I was in 4^th grade) because she refused to answer my question of “Why does it do that?”

Instead, she had me change variables like amount of light, location in the classroom, temperature, etc and also conduct thought experiments. When she finally had me think about what would happen if I did the experiment in space, I began to understand that my experiment was telling me something about the ways plants grow.  Instead of her answering my questions, she taught me to answer them myself.

Dave Marsh was the head of our school system’s Physical Education and Health Department and he gave me a “D” in gym class.  I had some relatively minor health problems in high school and instead of just accepting the excuse notes from the doctor, he insisted that nothing about my physical condition excluded me from participating in some fashion. If a visually impaired student was willing to go skiing I better well get off my butt and find something to do.

Once I took some first steps towards finding my passion for running and swimming, he was a personal coach and mentor when the going got really tough a few years later.  In a world of excuses and bossy parents, he had the ability to use sticks and carrots to get even the surliest teenager to care about their physical and mental health.

I had Professor O. Roger Anderson in an ecology class at Teachers College Columbia University. I don’t remember the exact topic but it involved a lot of math.  I studied biology to avoid math and when I taught my own high school biology classes I avoided it as well. Dr. Anderson’s course was the first to help me understand the pedagogy of teaching math and how, when applied to real world problems, it wasn’t the angry ogre of a subject I had made it out to be.

At 29 years old, he taught a somewhat old dog a new trick and ever since then I’ve recognized that the phrase “I’m bad at math” can often just be an excuse for “I’ve never really learned how to do this correctly”.

Of my many wonderful teachers in and out of school, it’s the ones that have given me a swift kick in the butt when I needed it most who stand out as my favorites.

Meghan Groome

Meghan Groome is the Executive Director of Education and Public Programs at the New York Academy of Sciences, an organization with the mission to advance scientific research and knowledge, support scientific literacy, and promote the resolution of society’s global challenges through science-based solutions. After graduating from Colorado College in Biology and Theatre, she desperately needed a job and took one as a substitute teacher at a middle school in Ridgewood NJ. She discovered that had a knack for making science interesting and enjoyable, mostly through bringing in gross things, lighting things on fire (but always in a safe manner), and having a large library of the worlds best science writing and science fiction. After teaching in both Ridgewood and Paterson, NJ she completed her PhD at Teachers College Columbia University with a focus on student question asking in the classroom. While at TC, she was a founding member of an international education consulting firm, and worked on projects from Kenya to Jordan with a focus on designing new schools and school systems in the developing world. After graduating, Dr. Groome became a Senior Policy Analyst at the National Governors Association on Governor Janet Napolitano’s Innovation America Initiative. Prior to her work at the Academy, Dr. Groome worked at the American Museum of Natural History and authored the policy roadmap for the Empire State STEM Education Network and taught urban biodiversity in the Education Department. At the Academy, she is responsible for the Afterschool STEM Mentoring program, which places graduate students and postdocs in the City’s afterschool programs and the Science Teacher program where she designs field trips and content talks to the City’s STEM teachers.