The New York State Teacher of the Year for 2017 is a science instructor whose immersion in science extends to her clothing—she wears a dress with a DNA double-helix pattern and matching earrings, one with bioluminescent jellyfish that glow in the dark, and another decorated with chemistry glassware. But she gets her students amped about science, and ready for immersion in today’s technological world.
Amy Hysick, who teaches at Cicero-North Syracuse High School, believes that mastering not only science, but also the scientific method, is crucial for young students. “I teach my students that science is really a verb—it is something you ‘do,’ not just something you ‘study,’” she says. “Science is a pattern of thought, a way to critically evaluate evidence for validity and reliability. By becoming familiar with scientific, systematic methods of questioning, students can become savvy consumers of any kind of information. They seek evidence to lend support to claims, instead of accepting things without proof.”
Her own passion for STEM started early. Her father taught mathematics and science and was an avid fisherman. When he cleaned the fish for dinner, she would beg him to dissect them so she could watch. “I knew the internal anatomy of a walleye before I entered kindergarten,” she says.
Hysick tries to help students make connections between the curriculum and their lives, to better internalize and retain the information. For example, to teach how our bodies use and store energy from food, she uses the analogy of a family meal—linking hot food and reheating leftovers stored in the refrigerator and freezer with glycogen storage, and the transformation of glucose molecules into energy.
“The family meal is a common experience for many students, and provides an anchor point so new information can be attached to existing neural pathways,” she says. “I try to explain scientific concepts like this to take some of the ‘scary’ out of learning science, and build students’ confidence.”
Hysick also tries to make science fun—for a pedagogical reason. “When you are happy and laugh, your level of cortisol (the hormone released during periods of high stress that inhibits the formation of long-term memories) decreases, and there is an increase in your levels of serotonin and dopamine—the endorphins tied to the brain’s reward center that promote the formation of memories. Being silly in front of my kids is a purposeful, deliberate teaching strategy that is backed by brain research.”
One of her female graduates has been cited for her expertise in gel electrophoresis, a method to separate DNA, RNA, and proteins according to molecular size and charge. Another student is headed to college to study astronomy and wants to work for NASA. She’s fine with whatever careers they pick.
“Truly, I don’t need all of them to become scientists,” she says, “as long as the takeaways from my room are the ability to think critically, look for and examine evidence, make connections, and become discerning consumers of information.”
Dassault Systèmes is proud to promote and support science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) education. For more information about our work with STEM initiatives, please read our recent posts highlighting our efforts to champion STEM education for students and professionals.
