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Linsey Newton; Hudson, MA
 "The
most satisfying thing about teaching is really seeing a light bulb go off
in a kid’s head, really seeing them get that 'ah ha' feeling,
like 'I’ve got it. I understand. Thank you so much. I’ve
been confused, but I really get it now.' And it’s very rewarding
to see that."
School at a Glance:
Joseph L. Mulready School, Hudson, MA
Grades: K-5
Enrollment: 283
Students per teacher: 18
Ethnicity:
93% White
3% Hispanic
4% Asian
1% African American
Percentage of students receiving free or reduced-price lunch: 16% versus
a state average of 29%
Linsey Newton teaches third grade at the Joseph L. Mulready
School in Hudson, Massachusetts. Located in rural Middlesex County, about
40 miles west of Boston, the Mulready School consists of grades 1 to 5,
and “respect and responsibility” are the core values that the
school embraces in its mission statement.
The Hudson Public Schools are
currently involved in an ambitious systemic, multi-year effort to improve
science and mathematics education, the goal
of which is to “provide hands-on, inquiry-oriented, and problem-based
instruction that encourages mathematical and scientific fluency.”
Linsey
says that her science background was enhanced considerably upon coming
to this school system: “Dr. Arthur Camins, the elementary
math and science director in Hudson, has been a huge influence on me.
And the FOSS curriculum has really opened my eyes to see how children
can look
at science as [more than] factual information fed to them by their
teacher, and really explore and learn science through their own experiences
and
from what they see in the classroom.”
According to Dr. Camins, “In
Hudson, we have three overarching goals for science education. One
is developing content knowledge. We want students
to develop experiences with how the natural world works and an understanding
of it. The second is we want them to learn how to conduct experiments
to develop the skills and habits of mind to know how to find out answers
to
their own questions. And the third is to be able to learn to build
explanations, to use their engagement with doing science, engagement
with materials,
and the kinds of thinking that we encourage to be able to develop explanations
based on the evidence that they see before them. In that sense, Linsey’s
Water Vapor lesson is a good example of that.”
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