Making the most of the I Am A Scientist Resources with Dr. Natasha Rachell
SEE HOW SHE USED INSPIRATION FROM OUR POSTER KITS TO CREATE AN ONLINE RESOURCE CALLED FLIPGRID.
Introducing Dr. Natasha Rachell
Dr. Natasha Rachell is a master of many trades. We spotted her Flipgrid inspired by the I Am A Scientist Poster Kit materials and were eager to reach out. She shared her story of her experience during education, to becoming an educator herself, and where she’s landed as a digital learning specialist and educational consultant.
“Growing up, I never had a science teacher that looked like me.”
Dr. Rachell reminisces about her experience in high school and how her first white female biology teacher got her excited about science. All her other science teachers were white males. It wasn’t until she went to college, a historical Black college, that she had a science teacher that looked like her.
Her career path took many turns after college before she returned to her love for teaching science. She started as a substitute teacher, earned her teaching certification, and subsequently began her journey as a high school science teacher. Now she serves as a digital learning specialist, working with science coordinators to ensure that technology is infused into the K-12 curriculum.
Additionally, she spearheads several district-level projects that roll down to schools and does educational consulting and keynote speaking. You can also see her work as a coauthor of the Microsoft Infused Classroom book as well as the Minecraft Good Trouble lessons (a series of 10 lesson in Minecraft focusing around social justice movements, good trouble, identity, and more).
“I am passionate about working with teachers and students and seeing them have what I like to call ‘lightbulb moments,’ those moments where something just clicks, they get it, and it makes sense, all because of something I shared or something I did. That’s my why. That’s why I do what I do,” says Dr. Rachell.
HOW I AM A SCIENTIST GOT ON HER RADAR
Dr. Rachell found us through fellow educator, Chloe (@chlgmbrll), on Instagram. She expressed her gratitude for a resource that not only exposes students to professionals that look like them, but allows them to hear their stories.
“Students get to hear about these doctors that were not necessarily the best students growing up, and perhaps they even got into trouble, but maybe they enjoyed playing soccer or creating music. Students get that! They understand that! That is a lot of their stories! They hear that and see the outcomes of these people that look like them, and internalize that if they can do it, I can do it! I LOVE that about IAAS! I love that these scientists are wearing regular clothes, and baseball hats and have tattoos! They are REGULAR people with a passion for science and changing the world! Students get that! I WISH that I had access to these posters to hand up in my classroom when I taught!”
Bring Dr. Rachell’s “I Am A Scientist” Flipgrid Project to your Classroom!
IDEAL FOR: ELEMENTARY SCHOOL THROUGH HIGH SCHOOL
Here are Dr. Rachell’s step-by-step details to creating her Flipgrid:
✦ I have taken each of the individual scientists and created a Flipgrid Topic that highlights each of them individually.
✦ Within each of these topics, I’ve included a blurb from the IAAS website about the profession of the scientist, the image of the scientist, and a couple of questions for students to consider in their response about the career of each of the scientists.
✦ I have also included a link to the Google Slides presentation of resources for each scientist, a link to order a set of posters for the classroom (they’ll be available again soon!), and a direct link to that scientist on the IAAS website.
She adds:
These topics have all been published to the Flipgrid Discovery Library. For those not familiar, the Discovery Library is a fantastic resource for teachers with over 34,000 topics created by educators, and vetted by the Flipgrid education team. Teachers are encouraged to search and filter through the Discovery Library by grade level, topic, subject, etc to find topics that meet their needs, and then make the topics their own.
For the IAAS topics that I have added to the Discovery Library, I shared my story of not having STEM teachers growing up that looked like me. I share how important representation is. I also shared that teachers should take these topics and fit them into their lessons and expose their students to these amazing scientists that look like them!
“Since I’m not in the classroom anymore, it’s my goal to share the IAAS with as many STEM teachers as I can so they can expose their students to scientists that look like them!” - Dr. Natasha Rachell
Special thanks to Dr. Natasha Rachell for sharing her insights, efforts, and ideas with us!
