 Family and Childhood I was born in rural Canada to a family of loggers and mariners (see photo of family logging camp). I had a fairly idyllic life until I was 9 after which I moved a lot and lived in a variety of urban poverty settings until I was 14. At that point I returned to my childhood home to live with my father and brother. During the time my dad was at sea (coastal freighter captain), my brother and I would live with my grandmother. All three of these people have been foundations in my life and continue to provide me unwavering love and support.
My father and I moved to Victoria, BC, Canada when I was 16 for his work as a BC Pilot (marine navigator) and I graduated from high school there. After high school I worked and traveled with Canada World Youth/Jeunesse Canada Monde to Quebec and India for nine months in total. I was paired with a wonderful woman named Geeta Narayan during this time, a Karnatakan low caste woman from the Nilgiri hills region of southern India. She was very multilingual and put us Canadians to shame in our mere bilingual traditions. She taught me about internal strength in so many ways, about hardships and prejudices, and about finding your own path. Early University Work and Ecology I worked on a cooperative education degree from 1989-1994, working and studying in alternating semesters. During that time I worked in a number of remote communities in forest ecology and resource management capacities. I also spent two years working full time for the BC Ministry of Aboriginal Affairs as I finished my degree, an opportunity I snatched up as it allowed me to interrogate my negative racial assumptions about First Nations people that had been part of the community narrative where I was raised. I was privileged to work with a wide variety of First Nations colleagues and clients and to come to a more complex and deeper understanding of land claims issues, native rights, and history through these interactions. In 1994, I completed a BSc in geography with an honors degree entitled "Use and abuse of the commons: an examination of resource management in the pulp and paper industry in coastal British Columbia." This work was a study of the pulp and paper mill which had loomed large in the life of my hometown all my life. I examined how economic and social forces caused them to alter their technologies and make dramatic changes to the mill shifting it from one of the dirtiest polluters to a nearly pollution free facility. After my degree my partner and I traveled throughout Nepal, India and Thailand together for 7 months. This part of the world calls to me again and again. Upon returning to Canada, I worked as a forest resource planner for a consulting company and later a field forest silvicultural technician for another firm. My already deep love of the environment and need to understand the complex nature of scientific processes involved in its healthy functioning blossomed during this time. This naturally led to further formal education in this area. Masters Work and Science Education  In 1997 I began a masters degree in Victoria but was moved over to the University of Western Ontario as my advisor shifted universities shortly after I started. I went with her as I was only involved due to her field project which had sparked my interest. I worked for two summers in the Noland Divide Watershed within the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, a Long Term Ecological Research monitoring site. During the winters I took courses in the Plant Sciences & Environmental Sciences departments and processed field samples in the lab. My dissertation was entitled "Nitrogen sink versus source potential of coarse woody debris in the red spruce-Fraser fir forest of the southern Appalachians, USA." The most prominent experience I had during this time was the opportunity to teach undergraduate biology laboratory classes for the Population Ecology course run by Dr. Herbert Kronzucker. In my many conversations with him about science and education I came to think of myself as an educator as well as a scientist. I really enjoyed my experiences in the classroom but was a little disheartened at times that not all my students had a love of learning about science...instead some of them were just "playing school" to get to a particular goal such as med school or a high paying job. I love science! I couldn't understand why this was not so central to my students. In 2000, before finishing my master's thesis, my partner and I decided to move to the US. My partner left Ontario to move to Colorado where he had found work in January of that year and I was able to join him by September of 2000. I spent that year writing my masters thesis, working on publications and trying to decide which direction to take my life in. Education won out. Teaching In 2001 I began working for John Dewey Middle School in Mapleton Public Schools as a middle school science teacher. While I didn't know it at the time I had landed in one of the best supported, most dedicated and innovative settings available to me. I was coached by two senior special education teachers on how to teach and so learned science teaching as a fundamentally differentiated practice, with attention to the needs of each individual student. I was surrounded by collaborative grade level peers who co-planned across subject areas and worked as a team to understand and support each of our students. I was guided by a principal who had assembled one of the most dedicated staffs and stood behind them while also pulling them aside to give clear concise advice when needed. I was in a classroom with a widely diverse student body who spoke multiple languages, had different ability classifications and challenges, were racially very different from each other and who were at the shift between childhood and adulthood (7th and 8th grades). I saw both anger at schooling and desire to learn in them. I saw curiosity and cynicism I learned to give respect before expecting it. I learned that teaching was about communication and relationships and love of understanding each other and the world around us. I learned that I loved the classroom, the students, the work of science education. I learned that not everyone saw this enterprise as did I. Parenthood In 2004, my partner and I became parents. I thought I would be able to go back to the classroom after my leave but realized quite quickly that I couldn't seem to part with my daughter for the entire week. Somehow the focus in my life had shifted to the care and protection of this little bundle of joy, and again with her brother. I started to see the world in a different way than I had before. I understood the love of my father and grandmother on a deeper level. I found my relationship with my mother more problematic. I began to see my partner in a whole new way.    I arranged a work-share with a colleague so I could work part time and then found out that my visa status would not allow for part time work. We decided that I would instead take the year off. After a year at home, and pregnant with our son I decided to remain home until the kids were a bit older as it allowed our family to be calm and sane and on a teacher's salary the cost of child care without family close was prohibitive. Equity in Science and Science Education --> Doctoral Work In 2006 we moved to Montreal, QC, Canada with my partner's work to be able to be close for our green card processing which was occurring there. This was a great opportunity to refresh our french and have the kids surrounded by the Quebecois language and culture. During my time in Quebec, as I came out of the mommy stupor, I began to think more deeply about education and what I wanted to know to be effective in the classroom. I realized that I was missing a lot of context in the US due to my lack of understanding about American history. I began to read a great deal about the complex institution that is US education. This new knowledge raised many other questions so I decided to apply to grad school and pursue a doctoral degree in science education. After returning to Colorado as green card holders, I was able to work part time as a science teacher for the Colorado Options program through Aurora Public Schools. I worked with home schooled students in Boulder, Longmont and Broomfield during this time and was able to think a lot about the wide varieties of beliefs that students bring into educational spaces. In 2008 I began my doctoral work at the University of Colorado at Boulder in science education, instruction and curriculum. I came to understand why students, like those I had worked with, who represented some of the most marginalized students across the nation, were getting so short changed by the educational system. Wow was social science graduate work different from scientific graduate work. Apparently there was a whole other language and set of skills I had to learn before I could even understand or begin to work on the things that most concerned me. Lucky for me I had fabulous peers. In an effort to survive our first year, (now Dr.) Subini Annamma and I began to work together....she had expertise in qualitative work and I had some in quantitative methods. In addition, I began to get to know (now Dr.) Elizabeth Mendoza, another cohort member, due to frequent side conversations in the hall about the lack of racial analysis in our course conversations. Together these two amazing scholars introduced me to a world of literature and scholars for which I was thirsty. I had so many questions about racism, oppression in general, the lived worlds of students I thought should be succeeding and participating in science but others viewed as unable, unmotivated or deficit in some other way. With these women, and others, I participated in the formation of RISE and continue to participate in a multitude of ways in issues of anti-oppressive education while at the University and beyond into many other aspects of my life. My dissertation research, conducted under Dr. Erin Furtak, explored the formative assessment practices of high school biology teachers and the potential of these practices to improve equity in their classrooms. My other research interests included work on critical science pedagogy, teacher learning communities as foci of classroom change, and understanding the intersectionality of race and gender disproportionality in school experiences and outcomes. I was able to pursue these other research interests through collaborations with peers and project work with other faculty. I taught in a wide variety of university teacher education based courses (see vita) with fantastic co-teachers and/or mentors such as Dr. Craig Schneider, Dr. Erin Furtak, Dr. Valerie Otero, Julie Andrew, Dr. Victoria Hand, Dr. Sue Hopewell, Dr. Ben Kirshner, Dr. Shelley Zion, Dr. Elizabeth Mendoza, Dr. Adam York, Dr. Susan Buhr, and Emily Kellagher. I've also had the pleasure of working with a variety of educators and scholars in more informal teacher education settings including the amazing teachers and educators involved in the MGL and ICEE climate science courses I have taught as well as Wynn Martens, Dr. Linda Molner Kelley, Jeanne McDonald, Sophie Roudane, Dr. Cesar Nufio, Dr. Anne Gold and Dr. Susan Sullivan (Buhr). I appreciate the relationships I developed across the University (CUTeach; LMAC; CIRES; UCAR/NCAR; NOAA) and across the nation (AMSE and their association with NSTA; NARST; NASA Outreach) to facilitate this work in teacher professional development on equity and on climate science education (an issue near and dear to me as a scientist and educator). Equity in Science and Science Education --> Post-Doctoral Work I had the honor of working with dedicated colleagues at Broomfield Heights Middle School. I deeply enjoyed the days spent with students thinking about how to best foster scientific literacy, critical thinking and equity in science learning. I was sad to leave these colleagues and students when I immigrated back to Canada in May of 2016. I'm currently working (part time remotely and the other time in person) with the amazing crew at the University of Washington's LIFE Center, the Everyday Science and Technology Group, and Institute for Science and Math Education (check out the STEM Teaching Tools produced through here) with Dr. Phil Bell. This is a great opportunity to work with districts, schools, teachers and students around issues of equity in conjunction with the implementation of the NGSS. I will be involved in two great projects primarily, the Partnership for Science and Engineering Practices (part of the Research and Practice Collaboratory work) and the STEM+C Curriculum effort. In my work I help educators reframe and reorganize learning in ways to build on students' natural curiosity and reduce or eliminate oppressive schooling structures. Learning can occur in respectful environments, content can be taught in ways that engage critical stance to knowledge, and learning should be centered on meaningful problems relevant to the lived worlds of our students in localized contexts. I write collaboratively with a wide variety of scholars on a range of issues that are important to me and those with whom I work. Please see my vita for presentations that indicate forthcoming publication work and for existing publications. Consulting - TREE Educational Services Due to many of my amazing peers and mentors all over the place I've had some great opportunities to consult on issues of science education and equity including working with BVSD, NASA, TFA and the Billion People Project. Thanks to all those who have participated in this work as it is often difficult, both emotionally and in finding resources, to be able to engage in meaningful equity focused work in science education. I have run most of this consulting work through my own LLC. |
