What our Educators say about Next Gen Science Innovations…
“There were things introduced that I’d never considered as part of lesson planning that I think will help me to be more effective at reaching every student who enters my room. The most impactful of these was the distinction between group work and group-worthy work.”
HHMI Ambassador
“Thank you for this workshop. I am a new teacher with little experience in NGSS. I have been taught under traditional classroom setting. This workshop gave me ideas on how to structure my future lesson plan on inheritance. The materials given are very helpful to new teachers like myself.”
East Side Union High School District teacher
“I learned a lot – especially about making sure everyone has a voice and to chip away at status. That is the thing that will stick with me the most. I took LOTS of notes!”
HHMI Ambassador
“Seeing an entire instructional segment, including the phenomena and ALL the pedagogical strategies, was one of the most beneficial professional learning experiences I’ve had. Usually, PD is one or the other, Jim and Samantha integrated them seamlessly. Can’t wait to attend another workshop!”
Living Earth Teacher
Fresno Unified School District
“The strategies for supporting students with modeling and engaging students were excellent and can be applied to many grade levels besides high school.”
Fremont Unified School District teacher
“I have attended an HHMI workshop by Jim Clark before, so I knew he would be wonderfully informative and the materials would be well thought out and able to be used in classrooms.”
Alameda Unified School District teacher
“I really appreciated that it wasn’t just curriculum topics but also pedagogy. Jim did a great job of modeling ways to elevate the status of different learners, improve productive communication, deepen group work and increase positive class culture.”
San Diego Unified School District teacher
“This is fabulous. I love working with groups. This is something where Jim got us up and moving and walking around the room and looking to see collaboration techniques. This is definitely something I’m going to take back to my classroom. This is real world, usable stuff that I’m going to use to teach sixth grade science, and I think this is something that I’ll probably use on Monday–some of the activities. The string activity that we did with the four people, that was really fun. We had to all be creative and figure out how we were going to use our string and how we were going to make the shapes. And that’s something that a lot of students who I think will have a lot of fun and think outside the box. Some of my quiet introverts are just going to get out there and have a good time with it. I also loved the math part of it-the one where we had to look at the data and then create a graph of some kind which, I was a little scared at first, but then when my creative juices started flowing, I thought, “Oh, I can do this!” And then the other people in my group really helped to solidify it and we came up with a really good graph!”
Angela Goodman
NTSA-goer
“I really like this kind of workshop because this is the kind of teaching I want to expand into. Part of my professional development ethos is about building an entire responsive classroom instead of top-down. Seeing this in different language really helps build upon what I’ve already learned. I’m going to take a lot of especially the mathematical ways of bringing that sort of what turns into usually a single person process into a group-
Eric Bryant
focused process. So, I really enjoyed this entire thing.”
NTSA-goer
“I am so excited to take the resources and the strategies that they gave us in the workshop back to my colleagues because data analysis and mathematical models is something that we are really trying to work on in my district at the middle school level particularly. And there are some really concrete ways for students to give feedback and also to represent data in different ways. 1. Being given the data and 2. being asked to represent it on your own and then 3. being asked to do it in a group and then 4. looking at other groups’ representation of that same data, and giving them feedback-which is something we’re going to do on Monday in my classroom.”
Elizabeth Walsh-Rock
NTSA-goer
“I’ve been to HHMI workshops before and they have always great content, but I found this really helpful for establishing some better routines and ways to help more of my students have a voice in my classroom. The idea of chipping away at their social status and that it’s a long term process and there are a bunch of little things you can do to help that process forward.”
Nichole Miller
NTSA-goer
“I am a new teacher. This workshop gave me ideas on how to start a unit and engage students in discussion and let students work individually. Discussion and group work using Commonalities and Differences and Trick or Trait were my favorite part of this workshop. The information provided will greatly aid me in my class.”
Los Angeles Unified School District teacher
“I honestly loved everything about the this workshop, I’m currently teaching inheritance, and I cannot wait to go and incorporate these assignments into my unit plan curriculum for this unit and future years to come”
Sacramento teacher
“These are highly effective in helping students understand concepts at a deeper level. Students enjoy them and seem to get engaged with them.”
San Leandro Unified School District science leader
“We’re like a learning team. It’s made us more cohesive. Students are more interested, and even though I didn’t do a lot of direct teaching before, I feel like the times that I do are only when necessary, and most of the time we’re all working together.”
HHMI Ambassador
Next Gen Science Innovations 