Was Your Science Teacher a Science Kid?

Do most science teachers start out as science kids?

For three Teaching and Teacher Leadership (TTL) Program master’s students teaching science this year at local schools, the short answer is, mostly.

For D’ara Campbell, the long answer is that she never saw herself as a science kid when she was growing up but found that it was in science classes where she did her best learning.

“I was a kid who brought all my questions, confusion, and ideas to the science classroom,” she says. “Science became the classroom where my inquiry and wonderings were celebrated, which is what made me love the space.”

It’s also why, when it was time for her to start student teaching, she decided to work at the Darby Vassal Upper School in Cambridge as a seventh-grade general science teacher. 

“I chose to teach science because of the way it’s interwoven into everything we do and everything we are,” she says. “While it is important to be well educated in all subjects, with our changing climate, issues of environmental racism, and many more it is even more pertinent for all to be knowledgeable regarding science.”

Uzma Issa is teaching eighth-grade robotics at Boston Collegiate Charter School in Boston and remembers lots of trips with her parents to local museums, including her favorite, a science center in Birmingham, Alabama, where she grew up. “I did many summer camps there and loved running around the interactive science museum,” she says. In high school, she volunteered at the center, doing science activities with visitors. “I would also join my dad when he watched animal documentaries at home. I loved science fairs, and science and math were always my favorite subjects.”

It was the same for Fahim Ahmed. “I was definitely always a science kid!” he says. Now teaching AP chemistry and chemistry 1 to 10th, 11th, and 12th graders at Boston Latin School, he remembers loving math and science so much as a kid that he applied to Harvard College with neuroscience on his brain. For his first three years, he was pre-med, wanting to specialize in adolescent psychiatry. 

But then — and this is true for Campbell and Issa, as well — there was that little voice that said, what about teaching? 

For Ahmed, this came after being a course assistant and teaching fellow at Harvard in organic chemistry and integrated science. “I realized near the end of my junior year that the kind of support that I wanted to provide for adolescents was actually similar to what I felt like I was able to provide as an educator.” At the time, he was also working with students as a peer adviser and musical theater director. “The one thing I realized that these commitments had in common was that they put me in situations where I was able to support others through their challenges, of many forms.”

Campbell comes from a long line of teachers, including her mother and grandmother, and always knew she wanted to work with kids, but her initial goal was to manage youth outreach programs in national sports leagues. She changed her mind when she was an undergraduate at Howard University after teaching middle schoolers living in housing developments in Boston through the Summer Urban Program, run by Harvard’s Phillips Brooks House Association. 

“I realized that being in the classroom and working directly with students can be life changing for both parties,” she says. “The conversations I’ve had, laughs or tears we shared, and the multitude of things I learned teaching are irreplaceable. While I am a third-generation teacher, I never thought I would be continuing this legacy, however, coming home with questions or thoughts and gaining the wisdom and guidance from both my mother and grandmother eases all the worry. My mother and my grandmother are strong figures in my life and having their support while I continue on this career path is instrumental.”

Like Ahmed, Issa came to Harvard College as premed and was a course assistant for life science classes, but realized pretty quickly that medicine wasn’t her passion, so she explored a few other career pathways — with no success. 

“I tried neuro research but felt guilty when working with mice in the lab. I did some psychology and environmental science research, but it felt isolating and heavy on coding,” she says. “I joined a consulting club but felt that it didn’t have as much social impact as I wanted.”

And then something fortuitous happened. “While studying abroad in Kenya the summer before my senior year, I was sitting in the truck with my field program director talking about my future and how I didn’t know what I wanted to do the very next year,” she says. “We talked about my past experiences and what I enjoyed, and he asked, ‘What about teaching?’ I hadn’t thought about it as a career path I could pursue, since it’s not a common career option amongst Harvard undergrads. However, I realized I could go into teaching post grad because education is something I have always been passionate about.” Two months later, she applied to the Teaching and Teacher Leadership Program at the Ed School.

Now a couple of months into the school year, Campbell, Ahmed, and Issa are working hard to make sure all students feel they, too, can be “science kids.” 

“Since I teach a robotics course, there is also quite a bit of coding in the class,” says Issa. Students come with varying levels of experience, some saying they have no idea what’s going on or don’t know how to do anything. “I walk them through coding one step at a time, asking them basic questions to help them break down what they want the end result to be, into smaller steps of code that they can work on one-by-one. This helps them think through the coding in a way that’s less overwhelming.”

At Boston Latin, Ahmed says that when students say they aren’t “good” at science, he starts by asking them about their past experience with science classes.

“We try to talk about what worked and what hasn’t in the past, and then we look at how this class could be different than previous years,” he says. “Maybe biology wasn’t your thing, maybe you had a class that wasn’t hands-on enough, maybe you had a teacher that didn’t understand your learning style.  That doesn’t mean that chemistry has to be a bad experience.”

For Campbell, sharing her own doubts about science has been important. 

“As a teacher of color teaching students of color, one of my biggest platforms is advocating that all my students see themselves as scientists,” she says. “Aforementioned, I was not a science kid, nor was I always 'good' at science, and I am quick to let my students know that and for them to know that my struggles did not stop me from trying to achieve. A new slogan I’ve picked up from our [HGSE] Methods course is embrace mistakes. While funny, this slogan helps me reinforce this idea with my students. I constantly remind them that it’s OK to ask a question, say the wrong answer, or to simply not know. Our space will always be one of learning that everyone contributes to and can find space in.”