Julie Krieger, TAC ’08, High School Biology

Facts:

After getting her B.S. in Biology at the University of Washington in Seattle, Julie came to Harvard not quite knowing what to expect. She was completely intimidated by the school’s reputation, but was immediately attracted to the prospect of being able to serve an urban population and share her passion with students who may not have been exposed to science in a proper way. Working with urban students through the TAC program, she quickly fell in love with teaching biology and being able to work with a population that had often been overlooked and ignored. After graduating from Harvard, Julie began working at Quincy (MA) High School as a biology and ELL environmental science teacher. She is currently in her third year of teaching at Quincy High and says that she can’t imagine working anywhere else.

Inside Scoop:

“The urban focus was my primary reason for choosing the TEP program. As a product of an urban school, I wanted to work with the population with the highest need and the most to gain from a good teacher.”

“Besides the focus on urban schools, the most important feature of TEP for me was the ability to work one on one with multiple mentors. The Cambridge-Harvard Summer Academy mentor teacher, the field advisor, and the primary mentor teacher proved to be invaluable to my student teaching experience. I was lucky enough to have mentors who lived and breathed collaboration and shared all of their hard work (worksheets, labs, assessments, projects) with me before I left the program. It is because of my experiences with these generous mentors that I find teacher collaboration so easy and so necessary here at my school. I have already shared my combined curricula with at least five teachers, most of whom say that other more experienced teachers don't have the same attitude when it comes to sharing work that they have created. My mentors and the TEP program have fostered a true belief in me that teacher collaboration is key to finding the most effective routes to teaching diverse students.”

“I hope that I inspire my students to at least not completely write off science as a career path. To get students interested in biology has been my greatest success, and to hear them exclaim, “Wow! Ms. Krieger, that is so cool!” is one of the best things that I hear as their science teacher.”