Environmental Science
Facilitating hands-on, engaging, relevant and real-world science experiences for my students is a cornerstone of my teaching philosophy. I want to spark curiosity, a love of science, and an awareness of how environmental science topics are relevant in student’s daily lives.
I teach AP Environmental Science, and we do a lot of labs, case studies, and hands-on activities. My favorite labs are our big inquiry labs, where students have ownership of coming up with questions they want to test, running the experiments, and then doing robust student data analysis. Major inquiry labs we do in AP Environmental Science include different types of water and soil testing, a radish and acid rain lab, a salt and lettuce toxicology lab, a solar design lab, an oil spill clean up lab, and a tap water testing lab.
When students have more ownership of their learning in an inquiry-based lab situation, they are more curious, more invested in lab design, and more inquisitive in their data analysis.
I also think it’s so important to get students outside, doing environmental science in the actual
environment as much as possible. Teenagers today spend a lot of time indoors, and getting outside to do labs is something that’s novel and interesting about our class. Things live and grow outside, and if we’re really doing environmental science we need to be outside! I teach on a suburban campus in the middle of northwest Austin, so I have to be creative with our outdoor activities, but our campus does have some “forest” areas in the front of the school, and some grassy areas behind school, and there’s a park across the street, so I utilize what outdoor space we have! Some of my favorite outdoor labs and activities include an ecosystem field walk, measuring trees for their ability to sequester carbon, a bubble population modeling lab, calculating the biodiversity around campus with Simpson’s Index, and monitoring for particulate air pollution.
Environmental Science is also cutting edge and relevant to student’s everyday lives. We do case studies and research reviews on current topics like climate change, bird migration, wildfire air pollution, mining of rare earth elements for electronics, and lead water pollution. I’ve designed at-home activities to engage students and families with environmental science topics that impact their daily lives such as water conservation, carbon footprints, electricity usage, and recycling.
I’ve taught a lot of different science classes in my 23 years as a Texas public high school science teacher, but AP Environmental Science is my niche and my passion. We didn’t have an AP Environmental Science class at my school when I first started working at Westwood 18 years ago. I started our school’s program with one class of 24 students in the 2009-2010 school year, and the program has grown to a consistent enrollment of about 280 students a year, which is
approximately 10% of our student population. I strongly believe all students deserve to have access to high-quality environmental science classes.