In this episode, Mark talks with Brooke Jenkins about her early teaching career, her time at ASU, and then as an adjunct instructor at Estrella Mountain Community College, where she was introduced to modeling instruction. They talk about her work with BYU Idaho, and her move to Utah, where she has helped to develop concurrent enrollment classes for high school students to take the course at their high school while earning college credit at Weber State University. She has been creating professional development for the high school teachers who administer the concurrent enrollment chemistry classes. She uses labs from the modeling materials and walks the high school teachers through how to do each lab in the way that modeling instruction would administer those labs. They talked about a grant she has been able to secure to fund the modeling instruction workshops through state funds, and another grant she is working on to provide stipends for teachers who attend the workshop.

Guests

Brooke Jenkins Brooke studied Chemistry Education and Physics teaching at Brigham Young University before going to Arizona State University where she earned her Masters in Chemistry. Her research in Chemistry specifically addressed assessment of conceptual understanding in chemistry. She has taught chemistry at the high school, community college and now at the university level. Since 2018 she has taught at Weber State University where she gets to mentor students working towards their licensure and has revamped the concurrent enrollment program. This redesign of the concurrent enrollment curriculum has allowed her to incorporate more modeling ideals into the labs and classroom. Hosting a modeling workshop in Utah has been on her bucket list since moving away from Arizona. She is very excited that this is the year this workshop will become a reality.

Highlights

[19:19] Brooke Jenkins "we go through an accreditation process to make sure that our concurrent enrollment program is in fact accredited. And one of those things is, you have to make sure that, what we're doing on campus is the same as what they're doing in the high schools, and that includes professional development for our teachers that are doing the program." [24:26] Brooke Jenkins "the way it works here in Utah is you get your license and then you get endorsed in different areas that you can teach in. And if a teacher is working towards an endorsement, then they can have their tuition covered for taking that class." [30:51] Brooke Jenkins "So if there's something in your state that can happen for your teachers, trying to figure out that incentive system may be a really big part to making your workshop successful."

Resources

Download Transcript Ep 64 Transcript Links Modeling Instruction Website