TIR Handbook - Mini-Biographies: 03-04

Teacher in Residence – Handbook

Mini-Biographies for the TIR's,
Their stories in their own words!

2003-04 TIR's

Michael Landino

After graduating high school with honors, I attended Phoenix College (a junior/community college) and began a major in Electronics. I changed over after my second year to a major in Zoology and received my associate degree. I attended the University of Arizona in Tucson and majored in Zoology with a minor in Chemistry/Physics. After receiving my bachelor’s at the U of A, I went to Eugene, Oregon and began my master’s program majoring in biological sciences and taking education courses for a teaching credential. While at the University of Oregon I did my student teaching and also entered an intern-teaching program as a full-time teacher in 1965. I attended many professional development programs, on my own initiative, to continue my informed education in all aspects of education and in the sciences. I have attended various colleges and universities as well as workshops. I returned to a full program for my doctoral in 1980 and received my degree in 1983. I have since continued contact with all aspects of my teaching profession by subscribing to professional journals and organizations, as well as continued formal and informal education programs. I even attained an administrative credential in the process. I have taught every grade level from elementary to University programs, both formally and informally. So my forty years of teaching have been very rewarding and I feel as strong now as I have from the beginning. I find that the ideas I have developed are coming to the forefront of the educational process. This gives me the satisfaction that I was and maybe still could be ahead of my time in the educational process. The PhysTEC program has given me an opportunity to do a year of research on the science education programs. Thank you for this!

Lynee O'Connor

I am a product of the Orleans public school system and Xavier University. I graduated from Xavier in Biology pre-med and attained a Masters degree in Biology Education/Curriculum and Instruction. I have been teaching biology and physical science for five years. I have also served as the Science Department Chairperson at L.E. Rabouin High school.

This year I had the opportunity to be Teacher in Residence (TIR) at Xavier, where I have been a crusader for physics reform. I have been co-teaching college students in courses such as Physics, Integrated Physical Science, Science Methods and How Things Work. I have enjoyed preparing pre-service teacher for a career in science. I also helped to develop a new course at Xavier called Exploring Science PreK-12. In addition, mentoring first year teachers has also been a very rewarding part of my job. This year I had two mentees, Ms Tiffany Booth and Mrs. Armie Wilbourn . Furthermore, I have been involved in teacher recruitment activities at Xavier, where I have given several presentations about the need for science teachers. I was successful in recruiting 18 science majors (Physic, Chemistry and Biology).

This summer I have been working at NASA’s Stennis Space Center in conjunction with Xavier’s Pre-service Teacher Institute. I have been teaching Inquiry based Physics to junior and senior Elementary Education majors. I am in my own class again, and things have come full circle for me, I have gained new knowledge about teaching and learning through my experiences as TIR, and my students who were once afraid of science are enjoying it.

In August, I will be returning to my classroom at L.E. Rabouin where I will be teaching Inquiry based Physical Science, Biology and Physics. I will also be working on a Doctoral Degree in Curriculum and Instruction at the University of New Orleans.

Michael D. Wolter

I began my physics experiences in high school (class of 1965, home of the mighty Muncie Central Bearcats) with the one of first releases of PSSC physics. Once exposed, forever involved.

I did my undergraduate study at Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana where I majored in both physics and mathematics. Starting my junior year at Ball State I worked as a lab assistant teaching the Physics 100 labs. The Vietnam war provided a strong incentive to go to school every summer and to go into teaching. I graduated from Ball State with a BS in ED in 1969. Even before I finished my undergraduate degree, I started taking graduate level physics classes. During my student teaching at Muncie Central with my high school physics teacher as my critic, I continued as a lab assistant at Ball State with the interesting job of unpacking Army surplus resistors and capacitors that were individually shrink wrapped, a semi-truck full of them.

The day I graduated college I signed a teaching contract with Muncie Community Schools. I was hired "on assignment", which meant I had a job teaching something somewhere next fall. My teaching career began in a Jr. High School teaching 5 sections of 9th grade general math. I can still do a 16 x 21 times table in under 7 minutes. Muncie was building a new high school at the time and after two years of Jr. High School I moved to Northside High School as the physics teacher for the next 17 years.

Northside closed as a high school and I was transferred to Muncie Central to replace my original high school physics teacher. I will be returning to teach physics at Muncie Central next fall. During my first three summers out of Ball State I attended summer school at the University of Minnesota under an NSF program for physics teachers. As a result of that participation I received an M Ed with a major in physics and minor in mathematics from the University of Minnesota. Over the next several years, I completed a year beyond my Masters degree in physics at Ball State University.

Personally, I am married and between my wife and I we have 5 children and 15 grandchildren. As my children were growing up I threw a lot of energy into cub scouts, church, boy scouts, girl scouts, explorers, red cross, and sports gallore. As a teacher I was able to dedicate significant time to spend with my children. In the last few years I have been trying to use some of that energy and time that I am became used to spending with my children to put a little something back into the world of physics.

About six years ago I began developing the use of a "math engine" in my high school physics classes for problem solving. I have presented several papers and workshops about StudyWorks by MathCad. In 1999 I was selected as the Indiana High School Physics teacher of the year. Last spring I received one of the 2003 RadioShack National Science Teacher Awards during the NSTA convention in Philadelphia.

This year I am working as the "Teacher in Residence" in the physics department at Ball State University, where my first teaching experiences began as a TA. My responsibilities include working with TA's in introductory level physics classes and with new physics teachers just beginning their careers. What a cycle.

Mike, our friend and colleague died on September 20, 2007 after a short illness.

Gene Wood

I grew up in a small town on the Illinois River, Seneca, Illinois. We had no science at all K-8 so my first introduction to science was general science in the 9th grade followed by biology 10th grade, chemistry-11th grade, and physics-12th grade. As I look back on it, the physics curriculum was actually quite innovative for a small town in the 50’s. It was on film. Each day the teacher, who was also the principal, would bring a 30 min. film which we watched and wrote up the labs for the next day. The teacher on the films was Harvey E. White, a leader in physics education reform at that time. Each lesson was short and self contained; the experiments emphasized discovery rather than confirmation of previously learned information. Of course, I wasn’t aware on any of that at the time. My senior yearbook has my pet peeve as-physics films and the class will has me willing my physics book to another student…….indications of things to come.

I worked one year after high school at Caterpillar Tractor Co. to earn money to attend college. I attended Illinois Wesleyan University one year, ran out of money, moved to the University at the other end of University Avenue in Bloomington-Normal, Illinois State Normal University on a full tuition scholarship. I graduated from ISU (the NORMAL had been dropped as the university had gone multipurpose) in August 1964 with a Physical Science major. The same month my wife Vivian and I moved to Parchment Michigan and I began teaching physics, chemistry, and physical science at Parchment High School. June of this year I retired from Parchment High School after 39 years of teaching 37 of them in the same classroom. Two years ago we built a new science wing on the high school so I was in a new room the last two years.

Viv and I have three children, all grown, educated in the Parchment Schools (Its fun having your own kids in class. They can’t tell you that they don’t have homework to do.), and all college graduates with advanced degrees. We have one granddaughter.

As the public knows: “Teaching is a cushy job….teachers have all summer off!” As teachers know—summer is when the teacher gets a majority of his/her education. For my graduate work I spent four summers at University of Minnesota attending a NSF Summer Institute in Physics directed by Dr. Russell Hobbie. [Michael W.– I was there ’69 –’72. Were we there at the same time?] I worked for the Upjohn Company for over a dozen summers in a variety of positions: chemical production, chemical research and development, and chemist in animal health R&D. This was in invaluable experience allowing me to keep current with the newest and best research techniques and equipment.

Not many high school teachers can have the privilege to say that he has synthesized compounds that no other person in the world has made before. This also allowed me to keep current as to what skills and knowledge industry wanted its new employees to have and therefore what was important for my students. Experiences like working at Upjohn also allows one to make other interesting comparisons such as having more money available for equipment and supplies for one person to set up and run a research lab in an industry for a 12 week summer position than is available for the same person to equip and run labs for 120 science students each year for 5 years in a public school. I was also chosen a Kellogg Fellow and participated in the Kellogg Teaching/Research Associates Program at Kalamazoo College. Working with Dr. Thomas Smith, I spent two summers synthesizing and characterizing binucleating macrocyclic ligand complexes.

During the summers of 1999, 2000, 2001, and 2003 I attended CPU (Constructing Physics Understanding) workshops on Static Electricity and Magnetism, Light and Color, Underpinnings, The Nature of Matter, and Waves and Vibrations taught by Dale Freeland and Dr. Robert Poel at Western Michigan University. I purchased and used CPU software and used inquiry-based, constructivist-oriented teaching/learning strategies in my Physical Science Core, Physics, and Chemistry classes at Parchment. I learned of PhysTEC from Dr. Poel during the CPU workshops. I was invited to be a member of the WMU PhysTEC Teacher Advisory Group and attended both the first and second meeting of this group. I ran into Dr. Poel at the Michigan Science Teacher’s Association Convention this spring and he suggested that I apply for the TIR position. I told him that I was planning on retiring at the end of the school year but he suggested that I should apply anyway. It turns out that the person that Parchment has hired to replace me is a recent graduate of WMU with a chemistry major and a physics minor. What a wonderful mentoring opportunity!

David Young

David A. Young (dyoung@fayar.net) was the 2003-2004 Teacher In Residence (TIR) at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville. Mr. Young was the District (K-12) Mathematics Coordinator with the Fayetteville Schools until he took a two-year leave of absence to develop the Mathematics Computer Lab at ASMS the Arkansas School for Mathematics and Sciences in Hot Springs). He then returned to FHS to establish the FASST program at Fayetteville High School. He is a T³(Teachers Teaching with Technology) instructor and has served on the development team of some of the T³ materials. He has been involved in several writing projects and co-authored Data Collection Activities for the Middle Grades with the TI-73 and CBL and CBR ,Getting Started with the CBL2 System and others.

David Byrum

The academic year 2003-04 was my 32nd year of teaching. The majority of these years I taught Chemistry and Physics, but I’ve also taught General Math, Introduction to Physical Science (IPS), Earth Science, 2nd year Chemistry, and Intro. to BASIC Computer Programming. I taught for a city (Tucson) Catholic H.S., a rural (Globe) public H.S. and a city (Tucson) public H.S., all in Arizona. I was science department chair for two of these schools, coached cross country & track for one, and was a track coach for another. I’ve been a high school track & field official for 25 yrs. and a college official for 8 years. My undergraduate degree is from Arizona State University, a BAEd in Chemsitry and my graduate degree is from the University of Arizona, a MaED in Secondary Education. This allows me to cheer on both schools in any sport or academic endeavor!

For most of my teaching career (27 yrs.) I’ve also taught CHM 130 - Fundamentals of Chemistry for the allied health fields for the local community college and for the last 6 yrs. I taught a dual-enrollment General College Chemistry course in the morning at the high school. Students earned both high school and college credit, at no cost to themselves!

I’ve been very fortunate to have had the opportunity to teach for two of the three major state universities in Arizona! For four summers I was a Co-Associate Investigator and Co-Instructor for the National Science Foundation grant creating the "Southwest Regional Program for Excellence in Precollege Chemical Education" at Northern Arizona University, and for a total of 9 yrs., prior to being the PhysTEC TIR, I taught at the University of Arizona for the Chemistry Department, CHM 244a & CHM 244b “Honors Organic Chemistry Laboratory”, and CHM 433/533 “Chemistry Demonstrations”, and for the College of Education, TTE 338-H, "Teaching Secondary School Science". These have all been a great experiences for which I am very grateful to have had the opportunity to work in these departments.

During my teaching career, I’ve had the good fortune to have worked with many supportive and creative colleagues and many, many neat students. As a result, I received the Presidential Award for Excellence in Teaching Science (1988), had the chemistry program that I created selected as a National Exemplar in Chemistry by the NSTA-CSSS-NSSA Search for Excellence in Science Education, as well as being selected by the Arizona School Board Association for their Golden Bell Award, and received a GTE Gift program award. The best award has been the five times that I’ve been nominated by former students for inclusion in the Who's Who in Education publication.

For the past seven years I have been the feature editor for the “View from my Classroom” feature in the Journal of Chemical Education and for four years was also for the feature editor of the column “Apparatus Review” in the JCE. This past year I was the President of the Arizona Science Teachers Association and I am now serving as the Past-president of ASTA.

I have a son who lives in the San Francisco area and is both a tennis pro and an accountant. He has been ranked nationally on the 30 and older tennis circuit and is fun to go and watch play. My wife has been a teacher for 29 yrs and is currently a math teacher at a high school here in Tucson. We enjoy traveling and have had some fantastic trips in the past four years, and we hope to have many more!

Teaching has been a great career for me, and with the opportunity that being PhysTEC Teacher in Residence, as well as being part of the College of Sciences Teacher Preparation Program, has afforded me to continue in the field by helping to prepare the next generation of science teachers has made the decision to be a teacher even better!