Career Path Video: From the PhD to an 8th Grade Science Teacher- Ellen Cohn

Ellen Cohn, PhD
Middle School Science Teacher

Ellen Cohn has a bachelor's degree in Biology from MIT and a PhD in Immunology from Weill Cornell Graduate School of Medical Sciences in New York City. She was also a post-doctoral fellow at Mount Sinai and is an active member of Future Science Educators, a NYC organization founded by science graduate students and post-doctoral fellows to develop teaching skills and provide education resources to other young scientists.

In the summer of 2009, Ellen joined the New York City Teaching Fellows program.  This is a program for career changers who want to get into teaching, mainly in high needs subjects, such as math, science and special education. Fellows are typically placed in the highest needs schools in New York City while training for a career in teaching and are awarded a master's degree upon completion of the program.  During the summer of 2009, Ellen was a student teacher in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn and starting in September of 2009, began teaching middle school science to 8th graders in a school in the South Bronx.  The curriculum is integrated, meaning that she teaches everything from reproduction to solar system to simple physics.  Ellen has “about 90 remarkable and energetic students" that she teaches every day.

For more information on careers in science education, click here.

Event this week: Motivating Students in Science: Social, Emotional and Motivational Factors in STEM College Success

Hosted by the Future Science Educators

Wednesday, April 14, 2010 7:00pm
Seminar speaker: Louise Hainline, Ph.D.
Dean, Research and Graduate Studies
Brooklyn College

Location
Hunter College
68th Street and Park Avenue
926C Conference Room, North Tower (9th floor)
Of the Department of Biological Sciences
Hosted by: Dr. Shirley Raps, Chairperson

About our speaker:  Dr. Hainline is currently Dean of Research and Graduate Studies at Brooklyn College and a Professor in Psychology. She received her BA in Psychology from Brown University and her Ph.D. in Developmental Psychology from Harvard University. Her research interests include the development of vision and visual problems in human infants, human cognition in natural settings including how people learn in school settings, and the social psychology of educational achievement in diverse populations.

This seminar is open to all students, post-docs and faculty free of charge.  Future Science Educators is a group that provides support to scientists as they develop skills and resources that are essential to educators. We believe that teaching is fundamental to the success of future science-based careers. FSE is open to graduate students, post-docs and professionals with graduate degrees.

For more information, please visit our website.
http://fse.groupsite.com/

How Scientists Can Support the Profession of Teaching

On Tuesday night I sat in an auditorium at the Academy among many motivated high school science teachers, all eager to improve the quality of their teaching and level of professional satisfaction. We were there to hear Sheila Tobias present “Science Teaching as a Profession. Why it isn’t. How it Could Be.”, a summation of her two-year study on the needs of science educators. Sheila asserted that improvement of classroom education will follow if teachers are more satisfied in their careers. Many issues were addressed this evening but I was there donning my PhD cap to specifically participate in a dialog on how scientists can work with teachers to help elevate the profession of teaching.

Several strategies emerged from these roundtable discussions between scientists and teachers. One approach is for grad students, postdocs, and PIs to give  guest lectures in high school classrooms to help not only students but also the instructors become more aware of exciting, cutting edge research. (It was noted at my table that scientists would too grow from the experience of having to learn how to communicate to less advanced audiences). Another is for scientists to assist teachers in the design of educational teaching modules that are appropriate and suitable for the high school lab. Yet a third option, teachers voiced that they could benefit greatly from opportunities to visit labs and do experiments, possibly even pursuing independent research projects over summer break.

What I applaud about these tactics is that they focus on the teacher’s development. While not a panacea for the many challenges faced by secondary school teachers, it makes sense to me that interacting with local scientists could at least help them feel both more connected to the subjects they teach and better equipped to instill enthusiasm, interest, and capacity for science in their students.

Anecdotally, my high school biology teacher spent her summers as a research assistant at the USDA agricultural research facility near my hometown in WV and this had a significant impact on my decision to pursue science. In fact, she actually arranged for me to work in the same lab throughout my senior year in high school and in the summers before and after. (And after having pored over the pages of Jurassic Park as a teen, being in a lab doing genetic engineering (on plants) was like a dream come true... yes, I am and always will be a science geek at heart).

While I am quite sure that these kinds of activities already exist on a small scale, as my high school teacher proves, a formalized program that facilitates robust communication and collaboration between teachers and interested science PhDs is needed to extend these opportunities to the broader community of educators. Hopefully something like this will emerge in the near future.

Alliance Online

As I endeavor to broadcast more Science Alliance programs over the internet, I consider whether watching an event online has the same benefit as being face-to-face with the speaker. The advantage of the webinar format is that it provides convenient access to our content when distance and time are factors (which for the scientist can come down to, does it require me to leave my building and does it fit between my timepoints). What is more, some level of interactivity is preserved with the at-home viewer being able to type or call-in questions to which the presenter can respond in real-time.

For the sake of convenience, though, you do sacrifice an opportunity to interact with others interested in a topic, and at an Alliance event, the network to which you have access is huge and includes people across a number of institutions and scientific disciplines. So networking is clearly hindered, but is learning compromised, as well?

Online learning is a hot issue in higher education with an ongoing debate about the extent to which teachers should be bringing their classrooms into the virtual space. You can check out some of the arguments for and against online courses in recent articles at The Chronicle and The New York Times. Interestingly, a meta-analysis by the US Department of Education found that “on average, students in online learning conditions performed better than those receiving face-to-face instruction.”

My take is that online learning can be successful but requires attention to pedagogical methods that have been proven for the virtual environment. This is not unlike the research and preparation that should be put forth to make in-classroom instruction effective.

I will continue to offer Science Alliance events online because I think it is important for our members to have access to the information we present, and will try to consider the unique needs of the virtual attendee. Nevertheless, for anyone local, I would encourage attending events when possible for the networking alone.