Career Path Video: From the PhD to an 8th Grade Science Teacher- Ellen Cohn
Tuesday, June 1, 2010 at 01:36PM 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.