Four Fellows were featured in the Cit Pat’s January 28 article on the W.K. Kellogg Foundation’s Woodrow Wilson Michigan Teaching Fellows who are now doing their clinical preparation at Jackson High Schoolin Jackson, MI.

Matt Oney with a JHS student. Photo: Shelby Mack, Jackson Citizen Patriot.

Dr. Oney, a plant biologist, is now in the middle of a year of field work at Jackson High School that’s intertwined with his master’s-level teaching preparation. He and three colleagues–chemist Ben Weaver, molecular biologist Clinton Bartholomew, and physicist Damian Kahn–are all doing their WKKF-WW Fellowships at Michigan State University.

In speaking with reporter Leanne Smith, the Fellows all emphasized how important it was to them to work with students who might not otherwise get a strong science background. “I want to help teach kids so they’ll be better prepared when they get to college,” Mr. Khan told the reporter. Dr. Bartholomew echoed the sentiment: “I can make a larger difference and a much greater impact at the high school level.”

Dr. Gail Richmond, who directs the Fellowship program at MSU, notes that “the entire staff [at Jackson HS] have been so happy

with these four Fellows and the MSU Fellowship’s support that the principal asked the newspaper to come and do a story.” The principal, Barbara Baird-Pauli, told the Cit Pat that having the four Fellows on board was a “golden opportunity” for her school.

Schools like Jackson HS need committed STEM professionals to teach their kids. What do you think it takes to get first-rate scientists and mathematicians like these four Fellows into the schools that need them most–and why don’t more make that choice?

Earlier this month, Indiana parent Krysten Moon saw 2009 WW Teaching Fellow David Johnson on a local TV show. Here’s what she had to say:

I’m a mom on winter break in central Indiana, watching a [local] television program … with my teenagers.  It is a discussion by teachers of their goals, disappointments, hopes, but seems to keep dissolving into a list of complaints.  Here’s what’s wrong with legislators, here’s what’s wrong with parents, here’s what’s wrong with communities…

It was frustrating and depressing to watch.  By the time you get to a television program, don’t you chose the brightest and best thinkers you have, to best represent education?  But is was a sea of blah blah treat us like professionals, blah blah there’s no way to evaluate teachers, blah blah blah.  We were drowning in this sea!

However, there was a bright spot, a man who spoke with clarity about interesting new ideas about how to improve education.  That man was David Johnson of Wayne Township schools, who identified himself as a part of your program. (We saw his picture on the front page of your website.)

We were so impressed.

When David Johnson spoke of a need for customer satisfaction in education, we cheered!  When he spoke of using technology (texting, YouTube) as an ally, instead of an enemy, we paused the television and had a full-on discussion.  We thought it was sad when we felt the moderator was dismissing his creativity as if it were too much work.  We loved his ideas about working with teachers outside of his classroom.

We want to see more  teachers like David Johnson in our schools. If producing teachers like this man is what Woodrow Wilson Fellowship does, then we want to say this: bravo!

Mrs. Krysten Moon

The Skomps married before graduating—she in December 2011, he in May 2012—and were both named Woodrow Wilson Teaching Fellows in June 2012. Since then they’ve been pursuing their teacher preparation together. Both John and Jordan are currently doing their clinical placements, essentially a year-long pre-teaching experience, at Indianapolis’ well-known Harshman Magnet Middle School for Science, Technology, Engineering, Math and World Languages.

So far, according to the IUPUI story, the Skomps give their clinical work as Fellows high marks:

“This has been an awesome experience,” Jordan said of student teaching. “I’m really beginning to learn what it means to be a good teacher and to better understand classroom dynamics.”

“It’s all about confidence,” John added. “You also need to set good boundaries in your class, because students are less likely to test those boundaries if you make it clear what is acceptable.”

Read the full IUPUI post here.

Ashley, a top 2009 biology grad from the University of Indianapolis (YouTube), is now an eighth-grade science teacher at Goshen Middle School in Goshen, Indiana. Marsha, who had a 20-year career as a research chemist before deciding to teach, is at Fall Creek Academy teaching secondary-level science. She writes, “The students inspire me!”

Marsha and Ashley, both of whom did their master’s work as WW Fellows at the University of Indianapolis, were two of just three Indiana teachers selected from among hundreds of applicants nationally to take part in NSTA’s New Science Teacher Academy. The Academy–jointly sponsored by NSTA, The Dow Chemical Company, the Amgen Foundation, Astellas Pharma US, Inc., the American Honda Foundation, the Bayer USA Foundation, and Lockheed Martin–provides a year-long “professional development program designed to help promote quality science teaching, enhance teacher confidence and classroom excellence and improve teacher content knowledge.”

Congratulations, Marsha and Ashley–two great examples of the quality of the Woodrow Wilson Teaching Fellows!

WKKF-WW Fellow Melissa Karjala ’11 (left, in blue) with three members of her English Channel swimming relay team (from Swimming World Magazine).

Talk about world-class. While the 2012 Summer Olympics have shown the world some amazing swimmers, the Woodrow Wilson Teaching Fellowships have their own world-class swimmer: Melissa Karjala.

On July 27, Melissa, who’s a 2011 W.K. Kellogg Foundation-Woodrow Wilson Michigan Teaching Fellow, helped set a new world record for a two-way crossing of the English Channel by a six-woman relay team. The women swam the 42 miles across the Channel and back in 18 hours and 55 minutes—4 minutes faster than the previous record, according to the Detroit Free Press. And they did it just hours after the opening of the Olympics themselves.

But Melissa and her team didn’t just swim for glory. They took on the challenge in honor of their friend and neighbor, University of Michigan professor Bob Schoeni, who was diagnosed with ALS (Lou Gehrig’s Disease) in 2008. The swim served as a fundraiser for Schoeni’s Ann Arbor-based ALS foundation, A2A3. Melissa’s team is still accepting donations towards their $120,000 goal at www.channelforals.org. You can watch an interview with Melissa and three of her teammates online at Swimming World Magazine.

Melissa did master’s work in education this past year as a Fellow at Eastern Michigan University. She’s a former captain and All-American for the women’s water polo team at U-M, where she completed both her undergrad degree and a master’s in public health.

Now Melissa is gearing up to teach biology as a Woodrow Wilson Teaching Fellow. Never mind what she knows about biomechanics and marine environments—imagine world-record determination in a classroom with kids. That’s guaranteed gold.

We’re proud of you, Melissa!

At the Woodrow Wilson Foundation, those of us working with the Woodrow Wilson Teaching Fellowship are in awe of some of the Fellows who have joined the program. Not only are they willing to give teaching a shot in spite of the challenges, they actually want the challenges. They don’t want to do the easy stuff. They want to do the hard stuff, for the kids who need it most, and they want to do it right.

These Fellows have a lot to say about the art and science of teaching, about what it means to transition into the classroom, and about the difference that their experience as Fellows makes. They also speak with laughter and clarity and sometimes a little melancholy about how tough the challenges really are. And, being expert problem-solvers, they come up with solutions that we think others can learn from.

So here at Woodrow Wilson we decided to start this blog. It’s meant to be a forum for the perspectives that our Fellows can offer, and a clearinghouse for some of their suggestions and resources. It’s also aiming to pull in some of the best advice and tools that mentors, peer teachers, and education leaders offer. Beyond that, from time to time it will also feature major policy issues related to the teaching profession and run announcements about the Fellowship. Contributors will include not only Fellows, but also an array of guest bloggers… and sometimes just us, the Woodrow Wilson staff.

Comments are welcome—in fact, comments and maybe even guest posts on substantive issues are very important to us, and to the Fellows. We really want to engage the education community. And since everybody in this country, one way or another, is a constituent of education, that means we want to engage you.

So stay tuned.