A Fellowship’s Natural Progression Aaron Reedy, 2007 FFT Fellow
A Fund for Teachers grant dramatically changed my approach to science education and continues to be a major influence on my career. I designed my fellowship to study water quality while paddling a kayak more than 1,000 miles on the Mississippi River. For an entire month that summer I was completely immersed in doing science on one of the mightiest rivers on the planet. The experience convinced me that science is a process that is best learned by doing. From that moment on I viewed the science classroom as an intellectual and physical space where students are supported in doing as much authentic science as possible. Through preparing for my FFT fellowship I also learned that scientists, both at universities and government agencies, are amazing resources often willing to collaborate with teachers for the sake of science education. Collaboration with scientists became a regular part of my teaching practice and allowed my students to push the limits of classroom science.
A few years ago when I began a PhD in biology at the University of Virginia I had two sets of goals. One was to pursue the study of biology at the leading edge of the field, and the other was to use my role as a teacher-scientist to promote the benefits of collaborating with scientists. I wanted to get more kids doing more and bigger science in classrooms. I launched Evolution Education to do just that. The program recruits teachers nationally for a two-year fellowship. In the first year of the program Fellows travel to Mountain Lake Biological Station for an advanced seminar in evolutionary biology co-taught by Dr. Robert Cox. From there they head to coastal Florida where they work with our team to study natural selection as it happens in populations of lizards living on tiny islands. In year two, Teacher Fellows are advised and supported as they set out to push the limits of science in their own classrooms with ambitious projects.
We are currently looking for our 2017-2018 Evolution Education Teacher Fellows. I know that Fund for Teachers Fellows are exactly the kind of teachers with whom I want to collaborate to push classroom science forward. Are you that teacher? Application deadline is April 1st.
Listen to Aaron’s TED talk about his FFT fellowship at http://bit.ly/FFTaaron.