Kimberly Burton hasn’t just been teaching science facts at Archbishop Curley High School for the past four years. She has also been attempting to show her students how the sciences apply to everyday life.
“I like to do a lot of real-life case studies with them,” Burton said. “Sometimes we go through and try to diagnose a patient’s symptoms, and then tie it back to the content we’re learning.”
Burton, who was selected as the Archdiocesan High School Teacher of the Year, said she enjoys seeing her students get interested in science and experiments.
“When we do any kind of lab activity, students are bound to make mistakes,” Burton said. “They grow from those mistakes and then realize that science is really about learning and growing, tweaking things and doing them differently the next time.”
Burton, who graduated from St. Mary’s College of Maryland and received a master’s degree from Towson University, worked initially as a public health inspector before becoming a science teacher.
“I think anytime you have different experiences that you can introduce to your students, it just adds depth to your career,” she said.
Burton has also incorporated the “storyline” method in her classroom.
“It’s not those typical units where you learn about cells, and then about enzymes,” she said. “We look at Africa, for example, and we study lions and lion population and biological concepts that we need to cover. We focus on the lions so every day when we walk in there, we’re solving this or that problem in biology and life. Then we’ll switch gears and study the Pacific shoreline and study sea otters and whales and sea urchins.”
Jeremy Joseph, principal of Archbishop Curley, said Burton is “continuously looking to push herself to find new, innovative ways to engage students in the classroom, and she’s willing to try new instruction or assessment techniques to make sure her students are successful.”
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