1 min read
In this episode, Science Educator Patti Lawrimore joins Dave to share her passion for science education and the joy she gets from seeing students enthusiastic about what they are learning and discovering. She shares the ways she changes classroom structure in response to the students and their learning styles and requests and the ways it helps them connect to the material. They discuss ways to assess student understanding and the place of standardized testing in a learning environment. They emphasize the importance of learning scientific discovery skills and how they carry into fields other than science.
She talks about her current project, LabDash, a portable science experience that brings experiments and discovery play to feeder schools and promotes learning while having fun. It provides application opportunities for high schoolers and exploration opportunities for junior high and elementary schools.
They touch on other education points like science literacy, student connection, and meeting student's needs. She has a passion for earth science, student interaction, and getting students out of the classroom environment. She describes science as the physical education of the core classes and what's it to be the place where students get to "exercise" their brains past what happens in the other classes.
ABOUT PATTI
Patti has been teaching science in Fulton County Georgia for 28 years most recently at Riverwood International as Instructional Lead for science and teaching Environmental Science. She loves teaching “outside the walls” and finding the perfect place on campus to experience science. Her classes have created and sustained food forests , opened an apiary and research garden on campus. Classes always focus on project and problem-based learning, making sure the students are learning how to ask great questions and the way to seek out the answers.
Her latest adventure is starting a STEM outreach program “LabDash”. Incorporating vertical instruction, bringing science phenomena to our feeder elementary schools.
She has a Bachelors of Science from University of Wisconsin-Madison in Conservation Biology and has an MEd.-Biology from North Georgia College.
When she’s not teaching she is hiking, practicing yoga or playing tennis.
