Welcome to our Teacher Feature
Clean Air Partners highlights a teacher involved in our Lead Teacher Learning Community or Teachers who implement On the Air in their classrooms. We dedicate this space to recognize teacher commitment to youth environmental literacy.
Tell us a little about yourself.
My name is Stephanie Isennock. I am in my thirteenth year teaching, however I was a stay-at-home mom for about four and a half years, including during the COVID pandemic. A lot and a little has changed in those years since first becoming a teacher. Some things remain unchanged, like the need for thought-provoking and hands-on science experiences, while others have evolved and changed with the focus more on making us all citizen scientists, like through the On the Air curriculum. I came to education by way of a science teacher who left me, let’s say, hanging with my life decisions in the balance. I was not ever in hope of being an educator. That is, until I had to shift my prior life’s goal of being a veterinarian. I promised myself to be the best science teacher I could be and never let a student feel the way I felt leaving that professor’s lectures and labs. With that in mind, I graduated cum laude and started my teaching career that fall. I have shifted through four schools, two counties, and five grade levels from third through seventh. My current teaching position is at the only environmental- and agriculture-focused public charter school in my county. Our parents and community rallied to fight to keep our school open as an elementary public school, but due to low enrollment, shifted and got a transfer charter approved some three years ago. I am also the teacher advisor of our Student Government Association, that leads the trend in making change by advocating in Annapolis at the Maryland State House on a yearly basis. My Bachelor’s of Science is in Elementary Education while my Master’s of Science is in Curriculum and Instruction with a focus on Elementary Science and Mathematics. It was during my Master’s program that I was re-invigorated in my passion for science and striving to make the world seem less “big” and more “accessible” to my students.
Describe the first time you felt a strong affinity for nature?
I grew up in nature. My family home is in a small, rural community at the top of a mountain and in the woods. I didn’t grow up in an area with sidewalks or even painted lines on the one-lane-but-pretending-to-be-two roads. Our traffic was a tractor hauling bales. My elementary school had one grade-level per class and was mostly filled with children from a military base nearby. We didn’t have street lights that came on to tell us when to come inside. Instead, I recall my mom saying, “Go play outside and don’t come in ‘til it’s dark!” Yes, we drank from the garden hose and ran around barefoot. I have the bee sting memories to prove it! We climbed trees and built tree forts. We set up tents in the summer under the stars, which we could clearly see with no light pollution. My family had grown up going camping and experiencing life outside of our little mountain. My father and brother both are Eagle Scouts, so I get a little of that nature-loving side from Scouting America as my husband and I are now raising both a Lion and Wolf Scout.
Nighttime Stars by Nature Stock
Describe what motivated you to join the Lead Teacher Learning Community.
After joining the staff at my current school, I was looking for more ways to help foster my love for teaching others how to teach science, like I found during my Master’s program. I also am concerned for how our students view our “airshed” being “up on the mountain” and “away from the ‘big city’”. Our students all arrive via parent-provided transportation, leading to an excessive amount of emissions during arrival and dismissal due to idling vehicles. I think, as educators, we are acutely aware of the trends towards more screens and technology. Being an environmental and agricultural school, we are fortunate to design our lessons with these in mind during our dedicated environmental studies block each week. This is about an hour and a half of time for teachers to solely instruct students in environmental education. With permission from my principal, other administrators, and our charter school’s board of directors, I was granted permission to explore the On the Air lessons and incorporate professional development into our school improvement plan. I remember, about 10 years ago, sitting in a session at the NSTA national convention in Charlotte, NC for a company advertising their program that was fully online. I looked at our then county curriculum specialist and said, “There’s no way they can take this out of the hands of students and still be effective”. Becoming a Lead Teacher has afforded me the opportunity to collaborate with similar like-minded individuals with a passion for more environmental education. The summer curriculum sessions were enlightening when everyone shared their unique perspectives and teaching experiences, leading to a better-adapted set of modules to fit the needs of all learners. The modules provide teachers with a clear start on how to incorporate phenomena-based learning while addressing the rigorous performance standards of the Next Generation Science Standards. It also allowed me to reach out to network with other teachers and industry professionals in a way that I had not previously experienced, including my own husband, who is in the transportation industry.
Dew on grass unsplash Photo by June Admiraal
Describe which On the Air activity is the most appealing to you and why.
I must preface this with the fact that I have a unique set of classes this year of less than 15 students in sixth grade and 23 students in 5th grade, which is not the norm. I’ve taught in labs of up to 40 seventh grade students and only a 47-minute block. These lessons are thorough for a reason. The depth and breadth of them truly puts a sense of environmental responsibility into the students. With that said, the time spent with the OTA activities has been mind-changing for the majority of my sixth graders. A large percentage of them identify as male, grew up in agriculture, and have a lot of experience with carbon-based fuel-guzzling vehicles. They are so passionate that I catch them from time-to-time designing their own tractors and trailers online instead of completing assignments! They rebuild historic trucks and have a vested interest in excavating equipment. Initially, I thought, “there’s no way these students are going to care ‘enough’ about their current environment to foster a change”. However, with the emphasis of these lessons, many of them have seriously considered the ways they can help be a voice to reduce emissions. I really enjoyed the “shift” of their mindsets during the second module when we looked at the global websites showing air quality at various locations around the globe. For our community, we see a lot of green days, with few yellow, but we were able to view the air quality over California during the fires and make personal connections to why reporters and families were wearing masks. As a culminating activity for this module, and after transportation industry professionals taught lessons about trucking filter systems, I asked students to design their own filtration system. They used the engineering-design process and worked together to test, re-test, and re-test their prototypes more until they realized that some amount of particulate matter, in this case flour, seemed to always find a way through. We lit a candle to talk about soot which led to a discussion about coal-rolling, which then led to my students confessing that they had family members with truck parts that are less emission-friendly. They took this information home to talk with their parents! Many of these students have started viewing air quality daily. We applied to the EPA for PurpleAir Sensors for our school, which we now use to report our EPA Flag Program AQI on our morning announcements daily. We monitor the cause of the changes in our AQI, especially on a day that we were orange in March. In my own life, I became significantly impacted during this activity due to an experience with VOCs (volatile organic compounds) at my own house. One of my sons got diagnosed with asthma as a result of an attack which led us to the hospital via ambulance. To say the impact Clean Air has hit home, is an understatement. My students see him daily and have befriended his love of trucks as well. We truly have established a community of environmentally-minded students and I believe much of that is due to the impact of the On the Air curriculum.
What environmental message do you have for young people?
Much of what we do as educators isn’t realized until years, or sometimes, decades later when a former student finds us on social media. The greatest compliment we receive is how we have helped shape their minds in a positive way. Often, I have told my students that “it’s not my job to give you my opinions. It’s my job to present you with data. It’s your job to take that data and DO something with it.” Science is all about action. Newton’s Laws of Motion, chemicals reacting, rocks changing form, and cycles in nature, are all a part of what we witness. It’s not enough to learn about it anymore. It’s time we DO something about it and this includes informing others of their impacts on the environment. We keep DOING something until we MAKE a change. Sometimes that change is immediate and sometimes you’ve got to work for it your entire life. We have a responsibility as global citizens to make the air better for all. Our air doesn’t “stay put”. It travels. Just like water in the water cycle can come from all over the globe and be recycled over and over, we share our air. What do you want to breathe? What do you want future generations of children to breathe? What are YOU going to DO about it? I’ll leave you with this quote from one of my favorite conservationists and TV hosts, Alex Trebek,” If you can’t be in awe of Mother Nature, there’s something wrong with you.” With great admiration and hope for your future, Stephanie Isennock 5th and 6th grade Math and Science Teacher Sabillasville Environmental Public Charter School
Photo by Solo Shutter @ Morguefile