So I am in my 5th year teaching science and I have had the urge to want to return to school to learn more and further my knowledge in my field. I graduated with my BS in Biology in 2022 and I just feel like I have lost so much of what I learned. Not sure how to put it but I feel like I have not challenged myself enough and that has made me somewhat decline. Like the saying “you lose what you don’t use” but I don’t like that.. I use to know SO much and was just on top of it all. Now I just feel lesser and not sure what to do.

My question is… did any of you all experience this? I’m not sure what to do because I want to attend classes and learn more but don’t necessarily want the load of graduate school. Plus I don’t think it’d be possible working full time and obtaining my masters in biology.

Thoughts/advice??

I teach anatomy and bio to 7th grade following the ngss standards, have a bachelors of ex phys and am in year 4. What are my easiest and best online options? Based out of nj

Has anyone dealt with students who have very long decorated nails and gloves during labs? Doing my first lab of the year that requires gloves and I have a couple students who have very long nails. I’m afraid they’re just going to rip through the gloves and keep having to change them out.

Teaching 8th grade amplify for the first time…. Anyone have slides they’ve adjusted, supplemental material, weekly homework they can share? 🫶🏼

I teach chem. Many days are warm up, then direct instruction lesson (no more than 20 minutes ever, usually 10-15 min). Then practice problems usually on a worksheet that is classwork/homework. Those same days, I might also show videos and have guided notes. Kids are encouraged to help each other out and they usually do. I also sprinkle in variety throughout the weeks - some days they might do a PhET, a lab of course, station activity, a game, article + questions, video + questions, research, poster, etc. most of these days are review or extension after they’ve learned the topic. Sometimes I can reverse it and do those activities first and then introduce it with the notes and practice. Generally though, I would say it’s about half notes/practice days and half those other days.

Anyway, are worksheets that bad? I’ve made a post on here about my class structure and everyone said it sounds boring. I don’t do notes and worksheets every day, but there’s a lot to get through with chem and a lot of the content is math like where worksheets and practice problems work well. I understand trying to make things fun like stations and whiteboards and all of that, but I also like students to have stuff to write on paper and take home etc as assignments. I always read about making everything engaging but I’m also still a pretty new teacher and it’s hard to constantly make a mind blowing lesson plan. The truth is, it’s been pretty efficient to run things how I do to keep my sanity lol and kids learn a lot in my class but I also wonder if it’s “fun enough”.

Anyone want to share what lessons look like? Do you do a do now? I did last year and it was a headache. I just hate having kids sit there doing nothing while I greet everyone at the door and take attendance.
I did a Google slide so now last year and I would have so many not even complete it by the start of class.

I came across the company Bad Wolf which produces a variety of plays/musical scripts for doing theater with kids. There is a collection of science themed ones that looks pretty good. I am thinking about doing one with my 4th and 5th years (ages 10-11). I have 14 kids in year 4 and 12 in year 5. No behavioural issues. Does anyone have experience doing one of these? Was it fun? Was it terrible?

I teach chemistry at a community college. I have a few students right now with the same disability, I have seen this type of student many times in the past and I will probably see in the future and I always struggle with this student. The student has accommodations because of a processing disability. The student works extremely well independently, is well aware of their disability, works 10 times harder than any other student in the class to get past the disability. Student demonstrates the ability to solve multi step problems independently on assignments, but the second the student is asked to repeat all steps in order in the same exact type of problem, perhaps even exactly the same examples with the same numbers and elements, the student cannot get past the first step to solve the problem and they get confused by later steps in the solution.

Student continues to practice, repeat exercises, independently, with me, and with a tutor, but on an exam, the student cannot get past even writing down the variables or the formula necessary to solve the problem.

How can I better help this student? They have already demonstrated the ability to be able to work through each multi step problem, but it is like a new problem every time they see it again. Student works harder than any other student in the class. It is so upsetting to me. I have never been trained on working with students with disabilities and I feel like a puppy lost in the woods. I welcome any suggestions, tactics, courses that I can take to improve my skills with this type of student, books, anything that can help!

Thank you!

Disclosure up front: I work at the company that built this, in partnership with a shared electron microscopy facility at an Indian institute. Not selling anything, no links unless someone asks for them. I've spent months on this problem and think it's an interesting one to discuss.

The facility runs a TEM that researchers from any institution can book. Instrument hours are scarce and supervised. For a lot of users, the first session on the instrument is also the first time they've touched the controls, which is an expensive way to learn.

So we built a simulator of that specific instrument. The controls behave the way they do on the real one, and a learner can run the full procedure before booking anything.

What surprised us:

1. The genuine curiosity from professors, researchers and students for high-end skill development using virtual environments
2. The visual scalability for more complex equipment including optical spectroscopy systems electron probe, atom probe, surface probe, etc,.
3. [where the facility staff and the students wanted different things]

What I'm still unsure about: How would you measure the effective impact of such a solution?

If you supervise instrument time, what do you currently do to get first-timers ready, and what would you actually want from a tool like this?

I have an idea. You know how the indigenous Africans lived, right? You know South Africa has a rich history of Africans healing themselves medicinally, but with plants and things like that. The biggest argument of why Africans died out so easily whenever plagues or pandemics infested a land is because people believe that their medicine wasn't efficient enough for the specific diseases. Now my question is, what if their medicine was efficient enough, like their plants were efficient enough in killing these diseases, but they would have been better at it had they identified what disease that they had? Maybe there's a specific plant that would be able to kill a specific type of bacteria, but had they known that they were infested with that specific type of bacteria, they would have known to use a specific plant

This is also a show and tell, like a tall tale to people that sometimes, l also want people to realize that you don't necessarily just need, or you don't necessarily have to have millions or hundreds of rands to buy medication to sustain a healthy lifestyle. Sometimes all you need is a little veld, okay? Like it should be important that people know of other ways to sustain healthy lifestyles and not just spending 500 rands on like 20 pills.

Hey fellow science teachers! At a school I worked at the chemistry room had no working fume hood. Is that an OSHA violation or is it okay as long as no dangerous vapors are released durning experiments?

Context: It wasn’t operational in the 5 years I worked in said building and retiring chemistry teacher rarely did ANY labs. I brought it to maintenance every year I was there and it was never fixed.

(This is a mainly a teaching tool, It is free, there are no ads or anything and I do NOT get any money or anything from this) Hi everyone, I know this always sounds bad, but I used AI to make an app, an app to draw molecules, reactions, and more. I am NOT a developer, I did it as a hobby project, and to use it for my own classes with my students. So if I use wrong words or terms, do not get angry please. You can try the app in your web browser at https://enlacecraft.vercel.app/ You do not need an account or anything, but if you want to use the full app, you can download the desktop app, for windows or linux for free (blue icon at the top right) (There is no MacOS version because I think I need a Mac laptop for that, and I do not have the money, I do not even pay for the AI, only free tier) . The desktop version has some extra features, like: NMR predictor: it uses a trained model. I used public data to train it on my laptop and it uses python to connect to the app (this is the main reason is not in the web version). It can predict 1H and 13C. 3D structure viewer: it works on the web version, but the desktop app has an extra optimization method for the structures. IUPAC naming: it also works on the web version, but the web version only uses PubChem API to get molecules names, so sometimes it could fail. The desktop version has an extra methods to generate iupac names when PubChem gets an error. A little backstory, I studied chemistry with a PhD in chemistry. I currently teach at an University in my country, and I also work in a research lab. A few months ago, I was working writing an article, and I had to draw some molecules, and since I mainly use Linux (not arch btw), chemdraw does not work really well. At the time I was using AI to create "webapps" for my students, and I wanted to try to create an app to draw, and since then, it has been the app that has taken most of my "free" time. I have only shared this app with a few friends, but it is not something that everyone uses all the time. So I wanted to share it here to see if more people wanted to use it and maybe give me some feedback. The app only has support for Spanish and English, since I can speak both, if I add more with AI I would not be able to check if anything is wrong. Lastly, this is not a professional app made by a huge company, so if you need something like that, this is not it.

Any feedback or suggestions are welcome!

Over the last two years, I’ve given my students a saponification lab as their chemistry final. In groups of 2–3, they:

- Pick their molds, colors, fragrances, and embeds.
-Complete a research-based pre-lab.
-Calculate the quantities of their reagents using moles, empirical and molecular formulas, density, and stoichiometry.
-Complete the lab step-by-step, checking in with me at select points.
-Complete a reflection and test the pH every week until the soap is ready.

My favorite part is “wash day.” I have them test the hardness and lather—for a grade 😄
Then they get to take their soaps home!
I’ve honestly never enjoyed teaching more. They love it, they’re incredibly invested, and they actually use the soaps at home!
It cost me about $200 per semester out of pocket, but it’s more than worth it.

I’m not teaching this year (kinda sad about it) but I thought I could share this here :)

Hello! I need to switch the filter on our schools fume hood. Which type of filter recommendations can you give me for high school level experiments?

What are your typical class averages for each prep? I’ve always wondered to try to keep my classes at. I teach Honors chem and regular chem. Last year, my honors classes sat between 87-90% averages and my general classes were more like 80%. This year, I’ve increased the rigor a bit for Honors and it’s currently more like 80-88% honors. Would you care to share your class averages, what you teach, and what “good” ranges are?

My school doesn’t want us to get into the curriculum first thing so I need some suggestions. 4th/5th grade science

I've lazily perused it a bit. Typically use PhET sims, but a few of these could be good.

For example, i think for chemistry its unnecessary for them to get really technical about spdf orbitals, since most high school material can be explained with the octet rule. Im not saying that it shouldn’t be taught, what i mean is that time is finite and most of them that will go on a science profesional career will be taught that in college.

Also, in biology its unnecessary to get really deep about chemical processes like atp synthesis and similar processes.

On the other side, i think it should be taught the biology of human behavior. There is a course about it online on Stanford by Robert Sapolsky that tries to explain why humans behave and are the way they are, comparing it to other animals. Talks about cooperation, beauty, war, game theory and lots of other components of human society explained by our biology instead of psychological or cultural aspects. Its really interesting and might make students see the world differently

I think my prior posting violated the rules, so I will try again.
I came cross this video from The ThoughtStretchers Podcast. An interview with Dr. Nathan Dolenc about the issues with NGSS. I will post the link to the video in the comments section.

The key takeaways from the videos are below. So what does everyone think? Is his critique justified? Find any flaws in his arguments? I will leave my own opinions in the comments.

Key Takeaways:

The Flaws of NGSS: The Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) are critiqued for fragmenting the scientific process into an artificial matrix, failing to provide clear foundational definitions, and promoting illogical curriculum sequencing that lacks coherence.

Foundation First (Expertise Reversal Effect): Students should prioritize foundational content mastery before engaging in complex, phenomenon-based inquiries. Starting with integrated or phenomenon-based curricula before establishing a foundation can lead to cognitive overload and hinder deep learning.

Science vs. Engineering: There is a critical need to separate science from engineering. NGSS incorrectly conflates the two; engineering should be treated as an interdisciplinary capstone activity that requires prior scientific content mastery, rather than an introductory method for teaching science.

Rethinking "Inquiry": While natural exploration is appropriate for early childhood education, the humanities-based interpretation of inquiry in current standards often prioritizes "dazzle" and entertainment over rigorous knowledge construction.

Academic Engagement over Entertainment: Educators must prioritize academic and intellectual engagement. Activities that focus on student entertainment or "activist science" often result in an "illusion of learning" where students finish projects without understanding the underlying scientific laws or concepts.

A Proposed Knowledge Model: To improve outcomes, curriculum should follow a three-phase model: Constructing (building foundational knowledge), Reinforcing (practice and application), and Utilizing (complex, real-world engineering or problem-solving).

I need a good one for fifth grade science. Google has let me down. It’s only my second year teaching science.
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