Commentary pubs.acs.org/jchemeduc
Teacher CEO Deanna M. Cullen* Science Department, Whitehall High School, Whitehall, Michigan 49461, United States S Supporting Information *
ABSTRACT: The precollege section of JCE videorecorded an interview with 2016 ACS James Bryant Conant Awardee Julia Winter of Michigan. This award will be sponsored permanently by the Journal of Chemical Education and ChemEd X beginning in 2017 with an endowment approved in 2015.
KEYWORDS: General Public, High School/Introductory Chemistry, Professional Development, Public Understanding/Outreach FEATURE: Award Address
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AWARD-WINNING TEACHER The ACS James Bryant Conant Award1 has honored high school teachers since 1965. Awardees are recognized for using highquality teaching methods, their ability to challenge and inspire students, their extracurricular work and their willingness to work for continual improvement. Julia Winter of Michigan has demonstrated all of those attributes and was selected to be the 2016 awardee. I had the pleasure of interviewing her in San Diego, California at the Spring 2016 American Chemical Society (ACS) National Meeting in March just before she received the prestigious award. Clearly humbled yet thrilled, Julia flew in Saturday to speak on Sunday during the High School Day program, sat for two different recordings including my interview (see the Supporting Information) on Monday morning, before she left on an afternoon flight for a business meeting just to return in time for the ACS awards banquet on Tuesday evening. Julia is a powerhouse of energy and creativity. Julia’s greatest joy in teaching has come from her relationships with her students and the runners she has coached on the school cross country team. Some of her students reached what she calls “legend” status, those students who have gone on to win awards in science and find success in their science careers. She enjoys hearing from them and even getting together with them when she can. But, she reveals that some of her favorite students have not reached “legend” status in the field of chemistry; instead, they are what she calls “frequent flyers”. They were the students that she has met during school lunch periods or at other times for additional study sessions. The frequent flyers challenged her to find creative strategies and present concepts using a variety of methods because chemistry was not easy for them. She took the challenge seriously and appreciates the commitment of those frequent flyers who reached for better understanding by putting © XXXX American Chemical Society and Division of Chemical Education, Inc.
in extra time with her. Julia is proud that she has affected the lives of her students, though she admits that she has also learned and benefitted from knowing each of them as well. She wants all of her students to understand that “chemistry is bigger than the concepts we are learning out of the textbook”. Anyone who has followed Julia’s career would likely not be surprised that she received the Conant Award. She has always challenged herself and found new strategies for teaching and communicating with students and teachers. In 2013, The Science Teacher published an article written by Winter describing a lesson called The Ethanol Project that she designed to bring a global perspective to her chemistry classroom, as well as incorporating communication and argumentation, critical thinking, and scientific literacy.2 She developed a YouTube channel called OChemPrep, which consists of screencasts of chemistry lessons to support her own students and others. She created a blog for use with her students and to communicate with other teachers3 and opened herself to communicating globally through Twitter using the handle @OChemJulie. Her newest venture breaks down even more barriers and opens her classroom to a much broader audience.
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TRANSITION TO CEO Julia has always used games, puzzles, and whiteboards in her teaching. She explained that because chemistry is not touchable, using models and manipulatives is especially important to help students develop conceptual understanding. Over the past few years she has worked with a team to transform one of the Received: November 1, 2016 Revised: January 30, 2017
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DOI: 10.1021/acs.jchemed.6b00845 J. Chem. Educ. XXXX, XXX, XXX−XXX
Journal of Chemical Education
Commentary
new and veteran teachers and feel her passion while she shares inspiring wisdom from her algebra I teacher who helped motivate her success and that she hopes she has relayed effectively to her legends, frequent flyers, and all of her chemistry students.
whiteboard games she developed about conformers of cyclohexane into a mobile app called Chairs! Her article, “Chairs!: A Mobile Game for Organic Chemistry Students To Learn the Ring Flip of Cyclohexane”, describing the development of the app and its implementation in classrooms, was recently published in JCE.4 Julia founded her company, Alchemie, in 2014.5 Teaching full time, coaching, and building a company is incredibly ambitious even for someone with Julia’s energy. For this reason, Julia made the emotional decision to take a leave of absence from teaching beginning in January 2016 to fully devote her time to her new venture as CEO of Alchemie. She had taught many levels of chemistry for 21.5 years at Detroit Country Day in Beverly Hills, Michigan. Her favorite course to teach was organic. The CEO of any company is responsible for overseeing operations, policy implementation and strategic planning. One could argue that Julia has been practicing all of those things within her classroom while working out of her kitchen “office” to develop her company. She is excited to have a new office outside of her home to run her business from so that she can go home without being surrounded by her work. She continues to be quite busy as Alchemie is developing even more games to support students while they learn chemistry concepts. She is also working on grant proposals to fund the creation of some of the games (Figure 1). Julia says that the timing is right to step into this new
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ASSOCIATED CONTENT
S Supporting Information *
The Supporting Information is available on the ACS Publications website at DOI: 10.1021/acs.jchemed.6b00845. Short video in which J. Chem. Educ. Associate Editor Deanna Cullen interviews the 2016 Conant Award winner, Julia Winter (MOV)
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AUTHOR INFORMATION
Corresponding Author
*E-mail:
[email protected]. ORCID
Deanna M. Cullen: 0000-0002-9099-1332 Notes
The author declares no competing financial interest.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Thanks to Julia Winter for fitting the interview into her busy schedule and sharing her thoughts on the associated video. REFERENCES
(1) ACS Web page, James Bryant Conant Award in High School Chemistry Teaching. https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/fundingand-awards/awards/national/bytopic/james-bryant-conant-award-inhigh-school-chemistry-teaching.html (accessed Feb 2017). (2) Winter, J. The Ethanol Project: Exploring Alternative Energy with Role Play and Writing. Science Teacher 2013, 80 (3), 48−51. (3) Winter, J. A Thing for Chairs. https://www.chemedx.org/blog/ thing-chairs (accessed Feb 2017). (4) Winter, J.; Wentzel, M.; Ahuwalia, S. Chairs! A Mobile Game for Organic Chemistry Students To Learn the Ring Flip of Cyclohexane. J. Chem. Educ. 2016, 93 (9), 1657−1659. (5) Alchemie Home Page. http://www.alchem.ie/ (accessed Feb 2017). (6) MergeLane Home Page. http://mergelane.com/ (accessed Feb 2017).
Figure 1. Julia Winter presenting her work for the MergeLane Accelerator Program6 at the Boulder Theater in Boulder, Colorado, in 2016.
role because her two children are grown now, affording her more time. She also credits her husband, who she describes as both supportive and patient.
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VIDEO TEASER You can hear Julia describe her classroom methods and how she feels about winning the Conant Award by viewing the video interview we created in San Diego (see the Supporting Information). Experience her energy when she offers advice for B
DOI: 10.1021/acs.jchemed.6b00845 J. Chem. Educ. XXXX, XXX, XXX−XXX
