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Grace Ellen DeBacker Ellen DeBacker decided to become a science teacher after her own high school biology teacher encouraged her to work with sixth graders at a district ecology camp. She was hooked on science and teaching from that point on. After 20 years of teaching earth science to eighth graders, DeBacker is still enthusiastic about her choice, and it shows in her inquiry-based classroom. For example, she has students don hardhats and goggles while searching for gold, gravel and coal in cake pans during a mining simulation. And they attend a yearly district wide trip to NOAA, which DeBacker organizes. Achieving National Board Certification is as exciting to her as having a student wowed by seeing crystals form under a microscope. |
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Bradley Loucks Bradley Loucks first considered teaching when he saw the potential of the outdoors, which he loves, in demonstrating important lessons about individuals and their role in the world. His lessons engage students to explore and, in fact, his students have won the NASA Name the New Orbiter Program. Loucks demonstrates that science is relevant in his students' lives by offering lessons that instill a historic perspective and show a connection between a discovery and its impact on society. |
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Haydee Gleason Phelps Haydee Phelps believes the only way to learn science is to do science. A geologist by training, Phelps was teaching at a Duke University summer program when she realized that teaching middle school was her calling. For the past seven years, Phelps has connected with her students as individuals, reaching them by recognizing their strengths. She coordinates the school science fair and implements an academically rigorous and engaging inquiry-based science curriculum. Her students are visibly successful, earning local and national recognition for their research projects. Phelps believes that a responsible citizen must be scientifically literate. In 2007, Phelps received the Colorado Science and Engineering Fair Teacher of the Year award. Phelps is forming a non-profit corporation to improve science education in sub-Saharan Africa. |
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Sandra J. Smith Sandra Smith knows her students have the potential to love science, and she says she feels lucky to bring out the "inner scientist" in each of them. For 20 years, Smith has helped students answer scientific questions through experimentation, observations and inferences, use data and logic to draw conclusions, make interpretations and decisions, share scientific findings through effective communication and see that the sciences are connected to one another and to everyday life experiences. Smith's students will long remember the first lab when she "eats" a candle, their first time seeing liquid dry ice and the culminating tie dye experience. She is most proud when a student's face lights up with a newfound understanding of a challenging concept. |
