For Sam Coughlin, science education is defined by relationships: the relationship between student and teacher, the relationship between scientific principles and real-world applications, and the relationship students develop with making mistakes and iteration. As an Upper School Science Teacher and Science Department Head, Coughlin works to strengthen these relationships in her own classroom and across the department.
Coughlin collaborates across disciplines and grade levels to ensure students see science in all contexts. From Organic Chemistry to Engineering to Astronomy, students can expect the same approach regardless of the topic, with an emphasis on developing foundational skills and applying them to hands-on experiences.
In the interview below, Sam Coughlin discusses Beaver’s approach to science.
What informs your approach as an educator?
It’s my job to build a relationship with each one of my students and provide them with opportunities to become informed, ethical, and compassionate citizens of the world. Every decision I make in my classroom recognizes each student as a person who deserves individual respect. Science is hard work, and it’s my hope all of my students are engaged in that work each day as they come into my classroom.
We learn best through risk-taking and mistake-making, and it’s my job to cultivate a classroom that encourages these practices.
Sam Coughlin, Science Department Head, Upper School Science
Science class is a medium in which to teach lifelong abilities. In order to fulfill my mission to educate the whole student, I need to give my students skills that will translate to whatever path they take after my class. My work as a science teacher is to demand excellence in science reasoning and problem-solving. Much of my practice is informed by a constructivist lens, and my students participate in hands-on, project-based learning.
How would you describe Beaver’s approach to teaching science?
The science department designs its classroom experiences with three cornerstones in mind:
- Diversify to meet the needs and interests of our students. We are consistently asking ourselves, “what does this student need to succeed?”
- Focus on challenge through deeper learning. Deeper learning requires much more knowledge and agile thinking. Compare the complexity of the task to more traditional ones, and you see how deeper learning is more engaging and complex and promotes adaptability.
- Connect to the broader community. We want students to think “where do I see this show up in other classes? What about outside of the classroom?”
Beaver science teachers intentionally design our curriculum informed by the larger community. Every science class at Beaver asks students to see themselves in science as well as make connections to larger community topics and issues.
Sam Coughlin, Science Department Head, Upper School Science
How do Beaver science teachers expand learning outside of the classroom, helping to show students how science can be applied elsewhere?
All of our Middle School classes are based around a theme; 6th grade is Science of Place, where students learn about how we can use scientific processes to understand the world around us. A great example of this is their Fall Foliage experiment, which tasks students with designing an experiment and then use the trees on campus to test their hypotheses. 7th grade is Science of Self, which allows students to learn about the science of different body systems and see themselves in the curriculum. 8th grade is Current Global Issues in Science, and the name says it all. Students learn about topics ranging from plastic pollution to space exploration, and they learn how to research and understand current science issues affecting our world.
In the Upper School, most classes will start by learning the scientific concepts and principles that relate to their unit of study. Then, students are asked to apply these scientific ideas to a specific issue or to accomplish a project-based task. An example of this is in Chemistry Foundations, where students apply their knowledge of molecules and chemical reactions to research an environmental chemistry justice topic. Students learn about issues ranging from the Flint Water Crisis and water contamination in Woburn to bus idling in Boston to uranium mining on Native lands.
We also have a variety of community partnerships as a curricular component to our advanced science courses. Anatomy and Physiology participates in weekly medical simulations at Harvard MedScience. Molecular Research partners with BioBuilder to learn the skills and tools of molecular research by designing and executing CRISPR experiments in yeast cells. Students in Engineering are partnered with a resident at Hebrew SeniorLife to design with and for the resident, with the goal of creating an artifact that is meant to improve the resident’s quality of life.
What assignments or projects highlight your approach to teaching?
In 9th grade, all students take Physics Applications: Engineering. In that class, students learn about circuits. They do all of the traditional stuff you’d picture in a physics class: notes, practice problems, and a test. Then, we ask students to create a project called “Put Yourself in Lights.” In that project, students are asked to design and build an artifact that represents some aspect of their identity. After they build their artifact, students wire LEDs to light up their work and use Arduinos to code the lights to blink in different ways. This is a quintessential example of the type of teaching that we promote at Beaver. Students learn the surface ideas about circuits, but then they are asked to apply their knowledge to a novel situation—forcing them to engage more deeply with the science ideas and transfer their knowledge to create something new.