We spotlight Myrna Barrera, CRS Science Super Star honoree, who teaches at New Highland Academy in Oakland. Myrna uses science as an all encompassing tool to engage her students in learning.
April 23, 2020
We are honored to name Myrna Barrera, 2nd Grade Teacher at New Highland Academy in Oakland, as a 2020 Science Super Star!
Myrna uses science as an all encompassing tool to engage her students in learning.
This past year, her and her students first studied the life cycle of animals. They paid special attention to mealworms – where her students noticed the phenomena of molting for the first time. As they observed their mealworms, they began to make connections between mealworm life cycles and animal life cycles in general. From there, they recognized their own – the human life cycle – follows the same pattern.
Myrna included math into this lesson by having them graph the stages of the worms lifecycle. She also had students create their own focus questions after doing background science reading on the topic. She embeds science learning with ELD.
She tries to create meaning making out of all of her lessons. She noticed that her students recognized what they learned about from their unit on pebbles and sand as they searched for earth materials in their playground.
Myrna also took them to the MLK shoreline, so they could clean up and see the impact humans have on the environment. They were able to have a lesson with Save The Bay, who worked to impart the realization that we all need to care about public spaces, such as beaches.
Even in daily life, Myrna is constantly advocating for her students to engage in scientific community efforts. She works with a food coop in maintaining and producing food for student consumption. She praises students who incorporate STEM into their everyday lives: “I have one student who constructed an entire village town with legos!”
Myrna’s advice for teachers who want to teach more science is one she strictly follows herself:
| “Use lots of STEM building activities.” |