Oscar D.

Newman, NBCT (EA Science, 2002, 2012)

TEACHING IS AN ACT OF HOPE

Welcome to Room 207!

When you enter my classroom, you find a space that is lively, rigorous, and productive because

students are active creators of understanding. The class does many different things, but I guide

instruction with the vision that learning is individually constructed. As teacher, my role is to design and

modify instruction to optimize conditions for children with varied learning styles and academic

strengths to take divergent paths to learn science and mathematics.

In curriculum, I model curiosity and growth when I develop and revise instruction based on

professional development, student feedback, and collaboration within professional learning

communities. Inquiry varies within and between classes, but active exploration to develop and refine

conceptual knowledge is a hallmark of student learning in Room 207. Students are supported in the

risky undertaking of deep learning when class culture is intentionally, cooperatively developed. I

collaborate with students to configure spaces, procedures, and relationships to support their physical,

emotional, and academic needs. I design assessment and feedback as ongoing conversations between

teacher and learners. The structure of topics and assignments are not a mystery: students are aware

of the purposes of activities and where they lie on a “ladder of conceptual understanding.” 1 Therefore,

learning is something students do rather than something the teacher's instruction does to them2.

Nurturing relationships lie at the heart of this classroom. Trust, support, and dialogue are

defining goals that guide communication. Students develop class learning standards through debate

1 I learned of this conceptual framework and the value of revealing maps of conceptual learning from David
Kanter in the I Bio Project at Northwestern University.
2 I owe a debt to my thinking about the relationships between teacher and learner to the work of Paulo Freire,
which has informed my work in teaching and learning for two decades.

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and consensus-building, and we revise and reflect upon them as partners within a school community.

I lead this classroom as an intentional, direct, and disruptive response to prevailing structures

of power as they relate to social, cultural, sex/gender, socioeconomic, racial, and ethnic life in society

– especially as these are historically manifested in urban public schools. My intention is to create a

welcoming atmosphere for all learners. These actions are especially relevant in my classroom since

many common stereotypes about scientists and mathematicians exclude the majority of my pupils.

This is a space where students actively build deep conceptual understanding in science and

mathematics. Student learning is manifested in plants and animal enclosures, experiments in progress,

posters on expectations for graphs and science journals, student-created concept maps and other

examples of student work. Selected assignments from early in the year remain posted as reference

points to observe how student thinking has changed.3 Student seating is dynamic, and physical

arrangement is changed so peer discourse can inform learning. Technology is pervasive and its use is

intentional. While technology facilitates student work, creativity is only cultivated when learners find

new, unintended ways to incorporate technology into math and science.

Creating authentic opportunities for learning means physical boundaries of school should not

limit us. Our class learns at museums, outdoor on-site learning space students create and maintain,

and by doing field research in natural spaces off-site. I work with colleagues to coordinate projects

with learning in classes like art or music. Students collaborate across ages when I facilitate peer

mentoring between middle school students and primary grade buddies.

In guiding the development of my classroom, I am conscious and intentional of the way I

3 The assignment is responding to the prompts, “What is Science?” (7 th) and “Draw a picture of a scientist.” (8th)

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present my role as teacher. Students learn I am an authentic 4, fallible, inquisitive person. Each year, I

will also make mistakes and learn from them. Narrating these missteps is my personal teacher

challenge as I gain experience in guiding instruction.

Being a teacher is not my only identity, and my pupils are similarly complex. I carefully choose

personal stories to share with students: I want them to know they can share their stories and also

inform me what may affect learning. Likewise, I reach out to parents to create a rich understanding of

my pupils. We create a space where we can all relate identities outside of school to the classroom. 5

This is a room in which all types of students in a diverse student population can be successful

learners, leaders, and citizens of a dynamic academic environment. At the end of their time in Room

207, students have been transformed.

What deeper principles and experiences inform this space?

I Must Take Sides6

I am a Salvadorean adopted into an Anglo family with a Danish mother and Russian-Jewish-

American father. A younger sibling was not adopted. Education is important in my family. My father

had a college degree7, and moves were based on his work at institutions of higher learning. My

parents modeled lifelong learning: for example, my mother returned to school for a bachelor's degree

when I was in elementary school.

My family seemed different from my classmates' families: I did not look the same as the rest of
4 A common piece of advice from experienced teachers when I began my career was “Don't let them see you smile until
Christmas.” I can hardly imagine worse career advice for someone who is authentically warm, humorous, and friendly
than thinking those traits must be masked in order to maintain student compliance with teacher authority.
5 The ease with which I can share my life reflects my own privilege, and I encourage students to reflect on the same.
6 One of the most influential quotes for me is Robeson's: “The artist must take sides. He must elect to fight for freedom
or slavery. I have made my choice. I had no alternative.”
7 Stories of different opportunities resonate in the family memory core: my father's father was prevented from going to
several universities because of the Jewish quota.

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my family or get treated the same way as my brother the way siblings in other families were treated8.

My mother was not a US citizen9 until fairly recently, and the idea that people live different ways was

instilled in us. Memories of activism in the 60s and 70s were fresh in my parents' minds and informed

how we learned about society. I learned of the gap between US democratic ideals and application at a

young age. The particular trajectory of US policy with respect to El Salvador made consideration of this

dynamic inevitable to me, personally.

With respect to my upbringing and experiences, I have gained insight into what it means to be

a person of color in the United States. Yet, I have had privileges: in socioeconomic status, in gender

and sexuality, in family structure, in linguistic abilities, and in other areas. My interpretation of these

experiences is to strive for humility about my own achievements and commitment to more equitable

outcomes in dialogue with those who do not experience such advantages.

Teaching as Hope10

There is no consensus on public education's role in the United States as with any of the larger

questions of public life or the common good. Being a teacher means actively laying out a contested

ideological claim or passively accepting society in its current iteration: “Education never was, is not,

and never can be neutral or indifferent in regard to the reproduction of the dominant ideology or the

interrogation of it.”11 For me, this means that my work consists of ensuring that students learn skills

and knowledge that allow them to fully participate in society. In US society, schools often operate as

8 For my mother, the fact her two boys looked and were treated differently was instructive about life in the US, especially
the difference between stated ideals and practice.
9 Memorably, at customs, my brother and I were taken away from my mother, as we were US citizens. These experiences
profoundly affected all three of us. While poignant, this was immigration experiences “light”: we had many advantages.
10 The inspiration for this heading comes from Freire: “I am a teacher full of the spirit of hope, in spite of all signs to the
contrary.” Freire, Paulo. Pedagogy of Freedom, p. 94
11 Ibid, p. 91

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people-sorting instruments that maintain inequity. My interpretation of the teacher's role is to create

opportunities for students to push back against this narrative. Likewise, it is a responsibility of public

school educators to interrogate how schools are considered within society and advocate for reforms

that benefit their students.

There are specific challenges to pushing back on structures and expectations in STEM

education. Most students will not become professional scientists, yet I deeply believe there is a role

for science and mathematics in everyone's life. Science and mathematics are ways of knowing,

understanding, and shaping the world. Using science and math instruction to kindle student curiosity

and inspire further exploration is profoundly transformative work for students and educators. While

student thinking often mirrors common perceptions that science is nothing more than a (difficult,

esoteric) body of knowledge, my own belief lies closer to this: “In reality, science is a language of hope

and inspiration, providing discoveries that fire the imagination and instill a sense of connection to our

lives and our world.”12

At the end of their time with me in Room 207, my goal is for all my students to master a basic

repertoire of science and mathematics understanding tempered with critical thinking skills and an

awareness of contexts in which science and technology are applied in society to join in the larger

intellectual conversation. I believe this goal is only possible when I hold myself to a high standard of

teaching and learning, when I create authentic opportunities to teach and learn content using inquiry

and problem-solving, by uncompromising acceptance of diverse students, and by guiding a classroom

that places reflection at the heart of academic and personal growth.

12 From Brian Greene's fabulous article, “Put a Little Science in Your Life.”

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References

Freire, P., Ramos, Myra Bergman, & Macedo, Donaldo P. (2000). Pedagogy of the oppressed (30th
anniversary ed.). New York ; London: Bloomsbury Academic, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing.

Freire, P. (1998). Pedagogy of freedom : Ethics, democracy, and civic courage (Critical perspectives
series). Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield.

Greene, B. (2008). Put a Little Science in Your Life. New York Times (1923-Current File), p. WK14.

Kanter, D. (2010). Doing the project and learning the content: Designing project‐based science
curricula for meaningful understanding. Science Education, 94(3), 525-551.

Kanter, D., & Konstantopoulos, S. (2010). The impact of a project‐based science curriculum on minority
student achievement, attitudes, and careers: The effects of teacher content and pedagogical content
knowledge and inquiry‐based practices. Science Education, 94(5), 855-887.

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