Teacher Testimonials

Name: Don Pruett

Role: Science teacher, instructional coach, science supervisor

District: The Clover Park School District in Lakewood, Washington has three middle schools with 2,040 students. Thirteen of the district’s schools are Title I schools with roughly 72% of students eligible for free/reduced lunch programs.

Challenge: Don Pruett wanted to bring hands-on learning to the Clover Park School District. To do so, he needed a curriculum that could overcome district-specific challenges, such as budgetary constraints and language hurdles.

Solution: The Carolina Certified Version of OpenSciEd

Results: Clover Park middle school teachers are seeing their students engage with science like never before. The questioning skills honed with phenomenon-based learning become second nature for both students and teachers. Students are participating fully, regardless of their first language, and the district can afford supporting resources thanks to the free instructional materials provided by OpenSciEd.

Science teacher and instructional coach Don Pruett has lived an interesting professional life. He started as an analytical chemist and medical technologist. At age 35, however, he was ready for a new challenge. He pivoted to science teaching and held different roles in K–12 education for 25 years. Pruett taught various science subjects over the years including chemistry, IB chemistry, biology, earth science, physical science, and agricultural science. He spent the last four years of his science education career as the Science Supervisor at Clover Park School District in Lakewood, Washington. While there, Pruett helped usher in phenomenon-based science learning.

Challenge

Pruett had long understood the importance of hands-on, phenomenon-based science for student engagement and learning, so he was the perfect person to promote and usher in phenomenon-based science at Clover Park schools. He also understood the district-specific challenges that a new curriculum would need to address, primarily budgetary constraints and language hurdles.

The Lakewood area has a high poverty rate that limits the school district’s budget for educational programs and materials. When considering the adoption of a phenomenon-focused science curriculum and the materials and equipment involved in hands-on work, the district needed to find a program that fit within their budget.

Lakewood has a large Hispanic population as well as many families from Asian countries. This diversity is reflected in the more than 70 languages spoken by Clover Park students. The district needed a science curriculum that all students could access regardless of their first language.

Solution

The Clover Park district found the answer to their needs in OpenSciEd, an open-source curriculum that is phenomenon-based and NGSS-aligned. The OpenSciEd middle school science curriculum was released in 2022 and adopted by Clover Park soon thereafter.

All OpenSciEd instructional materials are free to download and use. That savings enables Clover Park to take advantage of the OpenSciEd-certified kits and supporting resources from Carolina. The science teachers are enjoying the support provided by Carolina’s enhanced digital content platform, Carolina Science Online. Through the platform, the teachers can have students conduct engaging interactive activities that support their lessons, and they can easily generate reports for themselves and administrators.

Carolina’s Certified Version of OpenSciEd for Middle School earns an ALL-GREEN Rating from EdReports.

The customized lab kits from Carolina provide students with the materials, equipment, and clear instructions needed to conduct hands-on investigations themselves. As Mr. Pruett reflects, “there’s a big boost in learning when students conduct experiments themselves rather than simply watching the teacher demonstrate it.”

The hands-on labs also provide students who are learning the English language with opportunities to contribute their observations and input as they work in small groups. Students readily grasp both the real-world phenomena and hands-on lab results through the “language” of experience. This is one of the ways in which OpenSciEd “provides an on-ramp to science for all students and allows them to participate fully,” explains Pruett.

Clover Park teachers are finding ways to relate the phenomena to students’ cultural backgrounds. For instance, Pruett describes how one teacher sent home an “interview your parents” assignment in which the students asked their parents if they had experienced a similar phenomenon in their culture of origin. Talk about a conversation starter!

Results

The middle school teachers and students at Clover Park School District are diving into science with gusto and confidence thanks to OpenSciEd and Carolina! Teachers report their students are engaged like never before, which encourages the teachers and revitalizes their joy in teaching.

Clover Park students are learning the important skill of asking questions about a phenomenon and then investigating to better understand it. Amazingly, this intense classroom focus on observable phenomena is making students more aware of phenomena in the Lakewood area.

Pruett wanted to finish his science education career by teaching middle school again. In his final year of teaching, he taught 7th and 8th grade science using OpenSciEd. It was remarkably fulfilling for him to see students from historically low-achieving classes get excited about science and really dig into learning!

Mr. Pruett is now officially retired from teaching, but he is still active in the Washington State Teachers Association (WSTA). As the Professional Development Coordinator for WSTA, he conducts statewide online teacher learning sessions on the OpenSciEd units. As he realized early on, “teacher training is essential for this type of learning to be successful.” Now he trains teachers on how to fully use the OpenSciEd teacher manual, unit guides, and labs to make it easier for them to teach the lessons.

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