Nurturing Curiosity: Transformative Science Education with Teacher of the Year Amari Shields

Ever wondered what happens when a classroom becomes a hub of curiosity and discovery? Join us as we dive into the world of Amari Shields, a three-time Teacher of the Year, who transforms science education into a magical experience, inspiring the next generation of STEM leaders. 

Summary:

In this episode, we sit down with Amari Shields, the dynamic CEO of Mentored Motivation and a celebrated eighth-grade science teacher. Amari shares her inspiring journey from an English teacher to a leading advocate for inquiry-based science education. Her approach, reminiscent of Ms. Frizzle from The Magic School Bus, encourages students to explore, question, and understand the world around them. Through engaging classroom activities and a commitment to equity in STEM education, Amari empowers students to become critical thinkers and problem solvers. Join us to learn how Amari Shields is redefining science education and paving the way for future STEM leaders!

Chapters with Timestamps:

1:02 Empowering Inquiry-Based Science Teaching: Discover the strategies that make Amari a stand-out three-time teacher of the year. 

10:02: Fostering Inquiry-Based Science Skills for All Ages: Delve into strategies to cultivate curiosity and observation in students through collaborative and playful learning.

18:16: Exploring the Importance of Science Skills: Understand the role of critical thinking and problem-solving in science education, illustrated through real-world examples and classroom activities.

24:15: Investigating Biodiversity Through Science Education: Experience Amari's creative teaching approach as students explore the environmental impact of palm oil plantations, emphasizing biodiversity and sustainability.

30:15: Ad -- Explore Learning and Leading Through Play with Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor and Amari Shields

31:30 Journey to STEM Teaching Success: Follow Amari's path from corporate sales to a fulfilling career in science education, highlighting the power of project-based and inquiry-based learning.

44:30: Inspiring STEM Education and Motivation: Learn about Mentored Motivation and Amari's work to address education disparities and empower students from diverse backgrounds.

Links:

Joyful Play/Connected Learning online course with Amari and Dr. Diane

Earth Day, Every Day STEM Pack K-4 developed by Amari and Dr. Diane

@amarishieldseducation

LinkedIn

Thornton Middle School Teacher of the Year post

Transcript

00:00 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
Have you ever been in the presence of a teacher where you know you are witnessing magic? Today's guest is one of those people. I am so honored to welcome Amari Shields to the program. Amari is the CEO of Mentored Motivation. She is an eighth grade science teacher. She has been my partner in presentations and a co-author on a couple of projects I'm working on. I'm fortunate to call her my friend, and everybody else is recognizing how cool she is too, because she happens to be the teacher of the year. Amari, I am so happy to have you on the program. We are going to have an amazing conversation about all things STEM and science and inquiry today. Welcome. 

00:47 - Amari Shields (Guest)
Thank you so much, Dr Diane. I am super excited to be here. I've been a longtime fan of the podcast and it's like a surreal experience to be a guest. 

01:01 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
So you literally became teacher of the year this past week. Tell us what led to that, because I think it's super cool okay so this is what led to that. 

01:11 - Amari Shields (Guest)
This is actually my third time getting this award, but my first time in this district. 

01:18
So I had taught before in a different district and I got teacher of the year as an elementary teacher and then I got teacher of the year as an elementary teacher and then I got teacher of the year as a middle school teacher when I taught sixth grade and I moved to this district last year and I actually was really intimidated because I came from a really small district where I was kind of a big fish in a small pond to going to a very large district, one of the largest districts in Texas actually, and so I thought nobody's going to know who I am and I'm kind of starting over. 

01:45
And it kind of kind of shook my ego a little bit coming to this big district where nobody knew who I was. And so it feels absolutely amazing to have been recognized for the leaders and teachers on my campus to see all of the work that I put in, because I do work really really hard and high level, memorable, high quality science instruction is my jam and I'm just happy to see that I have been honored with that distinction. Because you know it. Let me know the good things that I'm doing are being seen around here. 

02:24 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
So, for those who are listening, I hope you caught that You're not just listening to a one-time teacher of the year, we're talking three-time teacher of the year. This woman has so much to share and we're going to go straight to her jam. I want to ask you what makes a science classroom that has that level of connection that I know is foundational to what you do? 

02:49 - Amari Shields (Guest)
Sure. So I'll start off by saying I had to change my thinking about what that was because I ended up being an accidental science teacher. I started off as an English teacher because I got alternative certification and I started. I got my degree in communication and so reading and writing made sense with that degree and then later the job that was available was a math and science job and I just have been with that ever since. 

03:14
Along the way I've come to learn that I love the way science instruction is given. It's inquiry driven, where the kids are able to ask their own questions. I love the idea of being curious, of getting to ask and answer questions, because we're all natural born scientists and we all want to know how the world works around us. And so that's really how I drive my class. I focus on authentic, real world application and allowing the kids to figure out problems, to investigate things, to look at phenomena and say man, what, why is that happening? What is the science behind that? And giving them. Because the reason that I focus it that way is because we all have these questions and we ask them over and over and over, like if you're a kindergarten teacher, you know that, but by the time you get to about third grade, you stop asking questions, and so it's an art to ask those questions and to be curious. 

04:14
And by the time the kids get to me in eighth grade, they're used to okay, just tell me what the science is. And I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to tell you what the science is. In fact, when you ask me a question, I'm going to say that is a good question, find the answer for me, discover the answer for me. And that's really the kind of teaching that I do here, and it's really important to me for kids to do the science, because I don't want you to just learn science facts. I want I will show you an example of this is what it looks like in the real world and this is what real scientists do. Now we're going to do that in the classroom. 

04:47 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
So I know you and I have been working together for a while and one of the things that brought us together was that whole idea of teachers being afraid of science and afraid of what happens when you open up the world to kids asking questions and discovering things on their own. That's scary to people because that's not necessarily how we're trained as educators. What would you tell those educators to get them to take some risks and do the Ms Frizzle thing? The get messy, make mistakes, run an inquiry-based classroom. 

05:22 - Amari Shields (Guest)
Sure, I think Ms Frizzle is such a wonderful model for this kind of instruction because she takes. If you really pay attention to how she teaches, you don't have to be intimidated at all. Ms Frizzle never gives them the answers, ever, ever. She never does. She never has a lecture, she's never. She does not know all of the things. And you don't need to know all of the things. 

05:48
I am a secondary science teacher and most people who are in my shoes were either a scientist in a past life or they went to school for like premed or nursing, or I have one of my co-workers who was a veterinarian before she was in the classroom. I'm not one of those people. I don't have a science background. I was not a very strong student in science. I don't know a lot of the content that I'm teaching before I'm teaching it, especially because we have new standards in Texas. I have to study this stuff because I don't know it, but I don't have to know it. 

06:19
You don't have to know all the answers. In fact, it's almost better if you don't, because you're kind of discovering with the kids. What you have to be able to do is set up a situation in which you're facilitating them learning. You don't have to be the sage on the stage, you don't have to know all of the things. And once that hit clicked for me, I realized oh, I don't need to know all of the things. The kids can ask a question and I don't have to know all the answers. I'm never going to stand in front of the class and lecture and I don't have to know the science. It made everything a lot more enjoyable for me, and it also allowed me to stop feeling inadequate, and so I think the biggest piece of advice is just to know. You do not have to have all the answers. You do not have to have a degree in the sciences. All you have to do is have the willingness to develop curiosity in your students and to give them the skills they need to find the information on their own. 

07:18 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
You know, one of the things that I tell teachers when I'm working with them in professional development workshops is let's find out together. That was my mantra when I was running a preschool and it's certainly my mantra as I'm working with elementary students, you know, with adults. Let's find out together takes that pressure off your shoulders, because you are starting to foster that sense of discovery in a student, and I think that that's so important. So let's break down that curiosity a little bit more, because I think that that's something that people are really interested in when you want to get kids intrigued and curious and get them learning with you. How do you go about setting the stage for that? What would be some of the strategies you would use? 

08:07 - Amari Shields (Guest)
So one of my favorite leaders in this type of instruction is Paul Anderson, and his website is the wonder of science, and he just has a lot of resources and a lot of tools. He actually came to popularity during COVID times. He was a classroom high school science teacher and he went to YouTube to do a lot of supplemental instruction for his students who were at home because we were all at home at that time and eventually people really saw how he taught and they liked that, and so now what he does is he goes around and he teaches teachers how to teach that way. He has tons of resources and my favorite thing about his resources is that they're all open access. His resources are available without you having to pay for them, and he shows you how you go through three dimensional learning, which is I'm going to teach my students what scientists do the science and engineering practices. So you use the three dimensions of science instruction, which is based on the NGSS framework. So first we've got the cross-cutting concepts, that's, things like patterns, cause and effect, stability and function, stability and change, structure and function all those kind of things that we see all throughout science. Then you've got the science and engineering practice. So those are the things that scientists and engineers do, that we're going to do in the classroom, like asking questions, planning investigations, constructing explanations, arguments, doing all of those things. And then you've got the content. 

09:40
And what used to happen is we used to always just focus on the content, but really the focus needs to be more on developing the science skills, and the best thing to do is to model that, just to show what it looks like, to be curious, to show little videos and snippets of scientists in the field. I have this beautiful video and I don't use the sound, but it just shows Jane Goodall out in the field and she's taking notes and she's observing. And I start with that at the beginning of the year. And then every time we face a new science topic, I always start it out by the kids making a little chart on their paper and it says what do you notice? And that's observing. And then what do you wonder? What questions do you have? And at the beginning of the year, the questions like, let's say, I show a forest fire and the kids are like who started the fire? Who, like you know? Their questions are like very surface level, but you, you teach them, um, as you're having like a consistent discussion and somebody says that and I'll say, well, who started the fire? Could be a good point, but is that going to help us? Do you think we can use science to figure out the answer to that question, or is that a question that we would just have? You know, will we actually be able to figure that out within the class? And it's a skill that they have to build and it's not something that Is, as it comes, as naturally as it would have before. This is super, super, super easy in primary classrooms because they've got all the questions. You don't have to teach pre-K, k, first and second grade. You don't have to teach them. 

11:10
Something happens. There's a little light switch in the third grade where they say I'm not going to ask any questions and it's like pulling teeth and it really takes building that in. And the best way that I do that is when we are having those conversations at the beginning of the year and it's like pulling teeth and nobody wants to participate. I just make a really big deal and I just say, when they're writing their things down, I walk, I'm walking around the room and I'm like, oh, that is a great observation. Could you share that out with everybody when it's time for us to have our consensus discussion. Oh, what a good question. That's a great wondering. When I ask for the wonders, can you please share that out and it? You know the kids their little chest get puffed up and then they're excited to share. And I also know I got one or two kids to get the ball rolling so that when we have our big discussion we're not so scared. 

12:00
Another thing I do, which is it sounds crazy and at the beginning of the year the kids are like what? But I have a carpet in my classroom and when we're having these discussions we come to the carpet and we use clipboards because that feels more sciencey. But we have these discussions like in a science circle and just like when you are in the primary grades those are in elementary school and you have circle time and we all come together. It fosters collaboration. It fosters it kind of takes down the guard, because I noticed that before it was like crickets in my classroom. Nobody was talking. But I realized that we're all around in different parts of our classroom at our different tables and it would be like trying to have a conversation with different people in your house and everybody's in a different room. So I was like I need to bring these kids all together and a combination of those things and you just build up the skill and kids. 

12:53
If it feels weird to you, it'll feel weird to you maybe for the first year or two that you do it. The kids, it'll only feel weird the first time. The next time they'll be like, oh I know, notice and wonder and I'm already noticing that, like the kids, it's so natural. It's just you have to give them the permission to naturally ask those questions that you obnoxiously asked when you were a kindergartner. You just have to bring that back out because we all have that in them. We all have that in them. We all have that in ourselves. You just have to tell the kids that it's okay to do that, because whatever it is that convinces you that you shouldn't be asking those questions, you just have to unteach that and tell them okay, maybe those kinds of questions annoy everybody else, but here in this classroom I love those kinds of questions, so let's do it. 

13:44 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
Well, and I love the fact that you're getting back into asking questions and encouraging it in a way that fosters communication and collaboration as well. One of the things I've realized is we lose that sense of play and it becomes a challenge for us as adults to figure out how to bring back our sense of play and if we can model that for the kids. That's part of the giving them permission to approach class approach, science approach, the content from a playful point of upper elementary is, I think, somewhere along the way we eliminate play, and I wonder if those two things hand in hand don't lead to a tim worried about being wrong and so you have to like dismantle that and say, okay, we're not at that point, we're at the beginning. 

14:51 - Amari Shields (Guest)
And when scientists ask these big questions and they make guesses, because you have to make a guess so you can start to investigate it. If I don't make a guess, I can't actually test and see if that's the answer. So it's useful for you to just guess. And I have all these things around my classroom about how failure is just like success and progress. Or Thomas Edison, said I. He said there's some kind of quote that I have someplace around here about how he failed like over 10,000 times and give him all of those failures to get it right. And so they need to understand we fail big and that's good around here. 

15:33
There's nothing wrong with being wrong and having a wrong hypothesis. That's not wrong. We actually learn from that. That's valuable because that gives us insight into the science as well. Even when scientists and scientists do that all the time, they don't have the right thinking a lot and people don't realize, like concepts like the, that the earth was flat. It was scientists who said that at the time and then later, as science progressed, there was evidence of different tools that we could use to show otherwise. And I tell them that all the time. Oh, scientists get it wrong all the time and that's why we need to keep doing science, because there's science that's out there right now. That's not right and we got to ask the right questions so we can figure out those things, because at some point there's something that we believe in right now that hundreds of years from now people will be like can you believe? They thought that? And it'll be because we asked the questions we needed to ask to lead to the answers, to make the discoveries. 

16:30 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
So it sounds to me like a critical piece of your science class, and what makes you such a good science educator is that you're teaching kids how to communicate and how to be able to look at the material and question it and look for other sources. Am I right about that? 

16:52 - Amari Shields (Guest)
Oh, absolutely Absolutely. There's four C's that drive my instruction and they are the four C's of 21st century learning Collaboration, communication, critical thinking and creativity. And you're going to see all of my lessons imbued with all of those things. But when I show kids examples of what science looks like in the world, no scientist is ever working by themselves. Scientists never work in a silo. They're always on a team, they're always on a group of people. And then there's a larger community. Because when you do discover something in science, you've got to write a paper, you've got to publish it and then put it out into the world. And I think a lot of kids don't realize that's how science works, that's how we get things done. And so when you understand that that's how the work of science is done, and I tell my students oh, in this class we don't become scientists when we grow up, we're scientists right now, we're all scientists right now and you are figuring out the science on your own today. You've got to have those skills. You've got to be creative, you have to have out of the box thinking. You have to be able to think critically and solve problems and unravel mysteries. You've got to be able to work with other people. And that is probably one of my toughest things right now, especially in this post-COVID era, because kids just want to text each other. They don't want to talk, they don't have discussions. And I tell them all the time chat. Gpt is not going to make any scientific discoveries. As awesome as the technology is, it's not a human brain and it's not curious. It can only do whatever we plug into it and we can't address any problems of the world. We can't make anything better if we are not asking questions, if we're not working together. 

18:50
One thing that I always talk about with my kids at the beginning of the year, when we're talking about engineering and we I talk about like what do you think is the best thing that was ever, ever engineered? And I'm in Houston, texas, and in every class I have some kid that says, oh, air conditioning, we can't live here without that. And I say can you imagine how many brains had to come together to create that, to turn hot air into cool air so that we can sit in this building? We have to think about the impossible. We have to invent the things for problems that we think are just a problem of life today. Think about it Like somebody in 1850 would be like, well, it's just hot, I don't have a choice, I have to just live through it. Whereas if the air goes out, we are like, oh no, cancel school, we can't live without it. Like it becomes just a part of life. 

19:48
And I think it's important to show kids that if you don't have these skills, you won't have any shot at having that kind of job. And now here's the thing. Some kids are like well, I don't want to grow up and be a scientist. I, that's not what I want to do. I will. A lot of them want to be a influencer or YouTube or whatever. 

20:05
But so even if and I tell them, even if you don't want to be a scientist, you still need to learn how to think this way, because you're going to have problems in your life and you're going to need to be able to break them down and figure them out. 

20:18
No matter what job you do, you're going to have to work with other people, so you're going to need to learn how to communicate and collaborate with people. And then, besides that, it's important that we all have some kind of scientific skepticism because, especially today, there's so many outlets for information and there's so much misinformation. So with a scientific mind, you can figure out like, hey, maybe horse medicine isn't a good thing to take if I have COVID, or maybe, no matter what these people say, I can look at the evidence and see something is happening with the global climate, even though people are telling me that there isn't. Like, those are valuable skills, no matter what you do in life, and so I really do believe that, no matter what you're gonna be, I know I really do believe that, no matter what you're going to be, I know most of my students are not going to become professional scientists by. You know that that's fine. You don't have to be a scientist or an engineer to need these skills in order to be successful in life. 

21:22 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
I love that. So before we go to the break, I would love it if you could pick one like science concept or one lesson that you really love and just kind of walk us through what that would look like. 

21:35 - Amari Shields (Guest)
Oh sure, okay, so I will actually talk about what I did last week, because I actually really loved it and I thought it was great. So what I was talking about, the concept was biodiversity and why it's important that we have, like, lots of different species, and so, instead of just telling them biodiversity is important, we talked about a few things. First of all, I brought in wrappers of all kinds of different like nutritional facts of different foods, different products, not just food. But I had them, look at them, and they're looking for the ingredient, palm oil, and a few ingredients said that palm oil was in there, but most of them didn't. But then there were all of these like ingredients where I don't even know what that is. And then I had a list of like alternate names for palm oil and a lot of the kids found their product that they had with their partner did have palm oil, it's just a different name. So then that led us to discussion why would companies not want you to know that palm oil is in your food and your laundry detergent and your lipstick and your soap Like? Why would they do that? Why would they change the name of it? And then that led us to say, well, where do you think palm oil comes from? Well, palm, that sounds like a palm tree. Well, where would those grow? Oh, in a rainforest. Well, in a forest. Well, what kind of forest? A rainforest? Well, do you think that there's enough if all of these products? So I have like 14 products, and 13 of them had palm oil in them and only one of them didn't 13 of them had palm oil in them and only one of them didn't. 

23:12
And I said, if this many products has palm oil in it, then do you think it's just naturally occurring in the wild? And they were like no, that they're like growing it. And I said so, if they're growing it and they can only grow in the rainforest and like a tropical environment, what does that mean? And then the kids come to their own. Oh, that means that they're like cutting down trees just to plant these trees. And then I show them like this is a palm oil plantation, this is what it looks like, what, how. And then I have this really cool picture that it's like a palm oil plantation on one side of the street, and on the other side of the street it's just the wild forest. And I was like which side is the plantation. Well, that side, how you know? Because all the trees are in rows and they're all exactly the same, and on the other side the trees are just like growing all crazy, how they would in the wild. Okay, good point. 

23:58
So now what we're going to do is we're going to use a tool called a transect and I show them a picture of scientists out in the field using transects to look at a little part of the ecosystem. I tell them we're going to examine the ecosystem. Now last week we had a very cold week in Houston, which we never had, and that day I told the kids and I said now where are these scientists? And they were like outside, miss, please tell us, we're not going outside. And I had underneath my carpet in my classroom. I pulled it back and I had set up transects on the floor. I have the kids down on the floor and we're looking at one organism type, we're looking at ants, and so I have every little dot on the paper represents a different type of ant. So I had them, you know, count up all of the ants and each table had a different transect that they're looking at. 

24:52
And then we came together, we brought our data together and so we're looking at the ants closest to the plantation. And then the further away you get from the plantation, you saw that it was a lot more biodiverse. And I was like, how can you tell? Well, there's like, and the one close to it there's only like one or two types of ants, and as you move away, there's like six types of ants and there's way more ants. So that tells. I said well, what relationship does that tell you? Well, that tells me that the plantation must be bad for ants. And if it's bad for ants, then it must be bad for other things. Good point. 

25:29
And so we walked through that entire thing and by the end of it the kids came to their own conclusion that having palm oil plantations, while palm oil and I also asked them, what do you think palm oil does? And we were able to figure out it is a preservative. It makes things last longer. I said why would a company want things to last longer? Well, because they make more money. Ok, so we've got to find a way to balance making money with being good for our environment. Because it is having palm cutting down parts of the rainforest to have these huge palm oil plantations. Is that good for the environment and they came to that on their own and it was just so cool to see them actually doing the science and getting down on the floor. And there were some kids who were like standing up and stuff and I was like oh no on the on the uh picture. 

26:25
When we saw them out in the field, how were they? They were down on the ground. Okay, well to well, to do science, you got to get dirty. You got to get down there and do it. And so the beautiful thing is, I, of course I have a pointed goal that I want them to get to. 

26:40
However, by releasing and just asking a few pointed questions, they got the point of what I wanted them to get to and they were able to see oh man, we make this big, we can make a big impact on the environment by choosing to do different things. And so the kids were like. Then they did a little research on their own and one of my students told me hey, miss, did you know? There's a little symbol that's on certain food that says palm oil free. And I was like, oh no, I did not know this, I had no idea about that. And so they discovered the importance of the things on their own. I think that's a description of hallmark teaching that you would find in my classroom, where they're doing real things based on what real scientists do, and then they're coming to their own conclusions about why what we're learning is important I love that, and they're getting a sense of biodiversity. 

27:42 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
they got a sense of the jobs that are available and the real world implications, whether you're a scientist or not, and I think all of that comes together beautifully in that lesson. We're going to take a short break and when we come back we're going to get to know Amari Shields just a little bit better. So welcome back to the Adventures in Learning podcast. We're here with three-time teacher of the year, amari Shields, who also happens to be the President and CEO of Mentored Motivation and a very dear friend and co-collaborator of mine. Amari, I want to switch direction a little bit in this part of the interview and ask you a question I love to ask every one of my guests. Let's talk about your adventures in learning. How did you get to be the person you are today, like what led you to this particular job and particular way of being? 

28:38 - Amari Shields (Guest)
I am so excited about this question because I've heard your other guests answer it, so I I can tell you I am the granddaughter of a fantastic educator. My grandmother, on my dad's side, she was a teacher and I loved seeing all of the things that she did. By the time that I came around, what I remember most, she worked in the career education office for her district and she did cool things like she wrote books and her, and she did cool things like she wrote books and her. There's a program now. It's called careers on wheels and it's when, like the police and the fire truck and the ambulance and everything comes to your school and you get to interact with these people and see the careers. Well, my grandmother was a part of developing that program and so I always admired her and I always wanted to be a teacher no-transcript, but whatever. 

30:03
At the time, my 18 year old little mom was like oh no, I got to do something else and so I changed my major to communication, just because the lady at the registrar office was like well, what do you want to change it to? And I was like I don't know. She was like what do you do? Well, talk, okay, communication. Like that's how I ended up doing that. 

30:20
And then I, when I graduated, I got a job in sales. I did that because my major was in communication, my minor was in advertising and promotion. So I got a job in sales and I left that job and went to another corporate job in sales and I was good at it. I was very, very good at marketing jobs I've got the gift of gab and I had a knack for it but it was soulless work for me and during those years working in corporate America I learned that I'm not a person who's motivated by a paycheck. I'm not a person who's motivated by like the material, like a lot of people in sales are like, really motivated by material things. Cause that's what kind of drives you to get that commission. And I just wasn't driven that much by that and what I really missed was what I had in my jobs when I was in college. I worked in before and after school programs and I worked at daycares and things like that, and I just miss kids. And so I started to work on getting my alternative certification, got that, got my first teaching job in Texas and I started off as a reading teacher. 

31:24
Took some time off because I had a kiddo that had a bout with cancer, but he is fine now and in remission. But when I came back to the classroom I had another kid, because I was stay-at-home mom for a while with my little one. And then I had another kid and it was time to come back to the classroom and my husband was like you think you might want to try to look for a job? And so I looked for something and only thing I could find was like a. I was thinking it was like in October, so I was thinking I'll probably find something that's open for January. But I ended up finding a job that was open because somebody had quit after the first three weeks of school and it was a math and science position. Bless those babies that had me as a math teacher for a year, because that's not my ministry. I learned that very quickly. 

32:14
I struggle with math. I probably could eventually be a decent math teacher, but that was a hard year and I became a fifth grade math and science teacher. Eventually that morphed into me just being a science teacher and I worked at that school for several years and then I went on in that district to. They established a STEM academy and every year I think they start off with 10th grade and then every year they would add another grade to the beginning and another grade to the end, and the year that they added sixth grade on, I said, well, my certification goes up to sixth grade. That STEM academy looks really cool, I'm going to apply. And so I applied and I got a job as a sixth grade science and engineering teacher and that is when I really really fell in love with STEM education. 

32:59
Before that, when I was a elementary teacher, I got to do a program through Rice University, the Rice Elementary Model STEM Lab, and that taught me a lot about like inquiry-based instruction. That's when I was really exposed to that. And then I got to take it to another level when I went to the STEM Academy, because we taught through project-based learning and that's when I learned about taking a real world problem and letting the kids work through it and giving them a true reason to drive their learning, and I was hooked. At that point I was like the STEM academy that I worked at was a school within a school model, and so there was, like this, one hallway of school that was the STEM hallway and the rest of the school was just a regular school and our test scores, our demographics were reflective, because we had to have like the same, our numbers had to mirror what was in the school. So we had to have the same number of special education kids and the same number of GT kids and all of those things. And so our numbers, our kids, they were just the same kids that were in the regular school. They just were put into the STEM program or applied to get into the STEM program. They, because they taught and learned in a different way, their achievement was so much higher than everybody else's. 

34:18
And that is when I became a true blue believer, because people would say, oh, you have it easy because you have the STEM kids. I'm like, no, I have the same kids as you, I just teach them the STEM way. And if you would teach them the STEM way, you would have high achievement too. I went from that to being an instructional coach on that campus. Then I went from that to being a district instructional coach, working with elementary school teachers in that district, and then I was driving like an hour and a half to get to work and it was just a lot and I really did love that district. But just like personally, my family lived on the other side of town and I ended up moving and the district that I'm currently in is a very large district and I didn't know anybody, and so the best thing for me to do was, hey, they need teachers. And so I. That's how I ended up back into the classroom. 

35:07
If you were to tell, like I think I teach eighth graders, and I think if you were to tell eighth grade Amari, you're going to grow up and you're going to be a science teacher and you're going to love it, I'd be like say what now? I don't even like science class. Like no, I am not going to do that, I will teach anything but that because I don't like science. But what made me fall in love with teaching this way is just seeing how this kind of teaching transforms kids. When you teach this way, the kids that have always struggled at like traditional school, they can thrive doing this. When you give them projects and you let them build and you let them play, because you're totally right in what you said before A lot of my instruction is very playful. Our labs are like I think the kids are used to, like one, like a cookbook lab that only has one correct answer, and my labs are not like that. My labs kind of have open ended answers and it could be a multitude of things and they're not used to that and it's uncomfortable at the beginning, but the amazing thing is to see how they or struggles with a multiple choice test can excel at a STEM challenge where you have to design a structure that can withstand a hurricane. 

36:28
Oh, if I have the kid who just struggles with math but I give them application of math, I mean, it's one of my favorite stories. This is actually about my own personal kiddo, but my daughter is dyslexic and I was really worried that she was going to. I just want to protect her love of reading, because she does love to read. But I know that when kids struggle with something, they usually start to have a bad feeling about that thing, and so I worried about that and when she was in first grade she was struggling to read but we had identified that she was dyslexic. She was starting to get some services. 

37:08
But she came home one day and she was so excited and she goes mama, look, I got to bring home my plant. And I said oh, how did you get this plant? She was like well, in order to get it. I had to fill out this diagram of a plant and I said, okay, well, did somebody help you or did you? She said, no, mama, I did it by myself. I said, how did you do it? She said, well, see, right here are the roots and that starts with the R sound. So I knew that that was roots right there. And then, right here, that's the leaf that starts with the L. And I said, ok, but these two words right here, stem and seed, they both start with the S and she was like, yes, they do, but stem starts with a stem. Mama, that's a blend, that that's how you say the beginning of that. So that's different than seed that doesn't have another consonant with. 

37:56
Her teacher, probably unknowing to her, gave this child the drive to learn how to do a consonant blend through science, because that baby wanted to take home that little lima bean plant and that drove her and that gave her the incentive. 

38:17
And did she think when the teacher gave her that chart to fill out, oh man, I struggle with reading, I don't know if I'm going to be able to fill out this chart. I'm not going to get my. She never thought about that. She thought I'm going to figure this out because I want to get to do the cool science thing. That is the beauty of science. It is a leveler of the field, it is an equalizer. All the kids, all my students, come from different walks of life, but when we come in here and we do this lab and we have this shared experience, I have some kids whose parents have memberships to the science museum and I have other kids who never leave their neighborhood and they're going to have vastly different experiences when we come in here and we have shared experiences and we all get to experience the same learning. 

39:05
That is really where equity comes in, because I'm giving you all the same chance to get, to explore and to get to. You know, I feel really strongly about this because I've worked only in Title I schools and I've seen this over and over and over again, especially when I was a district curriculum coach. Elementary teachers would say I would love to teach science but I just I don't have the time because I have to do math and reading. And I just so passionately, I became so passionate about teaching them. If you want to do science, if you want the kids to do math and reading, you got to do science. Absolutely Slide all the reading. You cannot do science without reading and kids will figure out how to read so that they can do the science. 

39:55
There's so much math that is built into science. In fact, I tell people all the time science is just applied math. I was one of those kids. Like I said before, I struggled with math, but when it was money, when it was something real, I could figure it out. And kids are the same way, if you've got a kid who's struggling with division, work that into a science lab in some kind of way. They will figure it out because they can actually see it. 

40:23
It's tangible, it has a real application, and so I find that to be like oh man, just a hill, I will die on that. If you focus on science, everything else will follow. Science, everything else will follow. And I cannot believe, like if you would have told me at a younger age that this would be my passion and this would be the thing that I champion, I would have been like science are you kidding? But it is. I really do feel strongly about it, just because it seems so simple, but it is such a large thing, and I just honestly feel like this way of teaching, because it seems so simple, but it is such a large thing, and I just honestly feel like this way of teaching is beneficial for all kids. And I don't feel, while I love the program that I was in, I wish it wasn't just for one hallway of kids. I wish it was for everybody. 

41:16 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
No, I totally get that, and as I'm listening to you talk, I'm just smiling, realizing this is why you and I found each other in the first place. It's that same hill that we're both willing to die on because, like you, I wasn't a science girly of what happens next and let's find out together. And oh, isn't the world really cool when we look at it from a fundamental point of view and I so agree with you it is the great equalizer and it's the best way to teach, because when you teach from that hands-on point of view, where you're using the phenomenon and you're finding out together, you can connect it to the picture books, you can connect it to the reading and the decoding, you can connect it to the math and heck you and I have both found. You can connect it to the history as well, because there's so much history embedded in our discoveries as well. Absolutely Yay. Oh, that makes me so happy. Talk a little bit about some of the projects you've got going on right now, some of the things that are coming up for you. 

42:23 - Amari Shields (Guest)
Sure, so I am working on I have a lot of things that are not necessarily just science-based, but my company is called Mentored Motivation, and that is because, like I spoke about before, my years in corporate America did teach me a superpower, and that is how to motivate people, how to get people to do things they don't want to do, and so a lot of my work in mentor motivation revolves around that. I also will frequently present on and talk about things in the STEM related field, and so right now I'm part of a leadership collaborative here in Houston where our goal is just really to push, push the message that STEM instruction is vital. And we've got to. We got to be teaching this way Like it just makes such a big difference. It really is my goal to be able to show people I don't know one day. You know how much I admire you and you know how often we've talked about how I need to go ahead and get those letters at the front of my name, just like you have, and so I think I've started to toy with the idea of pursuing my PhD and being able to do research, because what I'm really passionate about is equity in STEM education, because there are some serious disparities there and I just no, I feel very strongly about that and so those are my things. My, my two scopes are how you get kids, or people in general, to do things they don't want to do, or to make the learning fun, to, like you said, bring joy into the classroom. So that's really my focus, with Mentored Motivation. And then my other focus is on equity in STEM education, because I just feel like there's such a disparity and I just feel very strongly about, you know, kids in low socioeconomic backgrounds not getting instruction that serves them best. 

44:28
Underrepresented and underprivileged areas, where kiddos are doing worksheets all day breeds that school to prison pipeline kind of idea and I just that breaks my heart and I feel like it's unfair and I feel like labels are put on kids and my, one of my missions is to adjust the mentality in educators that, okay, that stuff's cool, but I can't do that with my kids, but these kids can't do that. 

44:58
Like, you don't't know these kids because I have worked in some really tough areas. Exactly, these kids can do it, and so it is a mission of mine to let to kind of dispel the myth of these kids, because it's not these kids and all of that stuff is like, tends to be historical, so it's, um, these are I can't think of the word that I'm looking for now but these are some societal issues that we have and it goes back to a lot of implicit bias and things, um, that people just don't believe that certain kids can learn certain things or certain ways, and I just want to dispel that, and so that is really a mission that I'm working on, moving in that direction. I really enjoy doing teacher trainings. That is something that I would love to do. 

45:48
I'd love to come into schools to consult and help you, to help schools build up their science programs, to also help just with general motivation, general performance, because when you believe you can achieve and I just those are my passions I am on all of the socials and I can provide those things to you. I don't I'm terrible and I don't have them memorized by heart. 

46:14 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
You don't have to have them memorized. We can put them in the show notes. 

46:17 - Amari Shields (Guest)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely. But I'm out there and I'm just trying to make a difference. My biggest thing is leaving this world a better place than it was when I before I came into it, and my method of doing that is by touching the hearts of kids and making them believe they can do anything. Because I really do believe that and I want as many other educators to believe that as possible. 

46:43 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
And that comes through when you speak here, it comes through when we've shared a stage together and I know it comes through every day in your classroom. So the very last question, because I love ending with this question what brings you hope? 

46:57 - Amari Shields (Guest)
Oh, what brings me hope? These babies, babies, these babies. And they're they're not jaded, they still believe beautiful things. And it's hard because if you look at the news for long enough, you'll believe that, like man, we're hopeless. But we are not. 

47:17
I'm telling you because I spend my days with the future generations. And they're smart y'all Like sure, they're addicted to social media. Some of them do strange things like eat Tide Pods and ridiculousness, but for the most part they're awesome. They are much smarter than I was at that age. They care about the world in a way that I didn't when I was that age. 

47:47
So that brings me so much hope and that is a part of the reason that I love working closely with kids, because in some of my other positions that I had before I worked more with adults and I found myself being kind of down, because we can be kind of downer sometimes, but it's because we've lived life and we've experienced things. And the beautiful thing of working with children is that they still have that sense of innocence and they still are dreamers and they still believe that the impossible is possible, and I absolutely love that. No matter what I ever do in my life, I will always, always have opportunities. I'll always be doing something where I can be around kids because, man, they just let you know that, as crazy as you think the world is, there is still. There are still lots of rays of sunshine out there. 

48:40 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
And you are one of those rays of sunshine. Amari Shields, thank you so much for being on the Adventures in Learning podcast. I will make sure we drop all of the contact information for you in the show notes and I can't wait to see you next month in Houston. 

48:53 - Amari Shields (Guest)
Absolutely, I'm so excited for that too, thank you.