First Day at Spofford Pond Elementary School with Science from Scientists

Allow us to introduce ourselves…

Today your child began an exciting science program in their classroom offered by Science from Scientists. SfS is a Boston-based, non-profit organization that strives to improve science and technology attitudes and aptitudes. We send real scientists into the classroom during school every other week to teach exciting, fun, and curriculum-relevant science lessons. We will be visiting your child’s classroom every other week throughout the school year. We will bring engaging, informative, and stimulating hands-on lessons with us to supplement the school’s science curriculum.

As part of our first day, we talked about different fields of research that scientists are involved in and went over some very important safety rules to follow throughout the year.  Afterwards we completed an activity that illustrated how science is like a puzzle, one in which you have to put all the pieces of data/evidence together to figure out what it means.  Science takes perseverance and lots of trial and error!  We then emphasized how discoveries are made all of the time that cause scientists to question their original ideas or simply shed light on scientific phenomenon that force us to reconstruct the “puzzle” and find new meaning as we can’t just disregard the new data!  For example, we shared some breaking news regarding a recent fossil find in South Africa that caused scientists to rethink what they new about human ancestry.  The newly discovered ancestor is called Homo Naledi.  Or, what about Pluto? It was once called a planet and now no longer is due to further investigation and discovery.  There is still so much to learn about science!

Please check the Classroom Post on our website regularly to read about the science activities that your child is participating in and to view photos from your child’s classroom.

Cortney & Tiffany

 

Get to know the instructors:

cortney

Cortney Wieber — Director of Education, Program Manager Curriculum and Vacation Programs, Instructor

Cortney loves science, traveling and animals, especially bats! She returned to the Salem, MA area after spending a few months in India and completing her M.S. in Australia at James Cook University, researching the role of flying foxes as host reservoirs for zoonotic viruses. Before that, she spent many summers abroad gaining hands-on experience in wildlife rehabilitation in various countries around the world while getting her B.S. in Environmental Biology at Salem State University. Cortney’s newest ventures include an emphasis on traveling within the country (instead of everywhere outside of it), running and training for her next Spartan race!

tiffany

Tiffany Travis-Assistant Instructor

Tiffany was born in Maine and raised in Connecticut before venturing her way to Boston for college where she fell in love with the city. Thanks to her dedicated science teachers over the years, she found herself passionate about the wonders of science. She earned a B.S. in Biochemistry in 2010 and her MAT in Secondary Education in 2014, both at Northeastern University. Tiffany has experience in both the research and education fields. She completed a unique trip with SEA Semester during which she sailed aboard a tall ship where she learned sail handling and researched the effect of ocean acidification on pteropods. Tiffany has also worked at two pharmaceutical companies as a co-op during undergrad and then worked her initial few years out of college at Joule Unlimited Technologies where she helped run small-scale bioreactors and cultured various strains of cyanobacteria used in production runs to synthesis non-biomass based ethanol as a byproduct of photosynthesis. After quickly realizing she loved helping others and seeing them learn, she moved on to teach high school chemistry and biology. She’s looking forward to sharing her passion for science and drive for learning with other students through Science from Scientists! In Tiffany’s spare time, she loves to bake, read, and travel. She’s also an avid runner and hopes to run the Boston Marathon in the near future.

 

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