This episode is what happens when I spend an hour chatting with a grad school friend about some of our favorite topics! I'm joined by Jess Rowell, a fellow Renaissance Woman, who teaches 6th and 8th grade science and STEM in Maryland. Jess discusses how her industry spanning career and world travels have impacted her teaching philosophy. We talk about the unique challenges the pandemic has created for her current 6th grade students and how she's connecting the dots for them during the school day. Jess shares her love of space (and not-so-secret desire to bring more space education to schools). Plus, we learn why boats are so important in her life.

Promised Show Notes Materials (take a drink):

1. Sign up for updates on my podcast and what's happening in the Renaissance People Community
2. Book the poster “All I really need to know I learned in kindergarten” is based on
3. Critique of phrase “Learning Loss” and another perspective on “learning loss”
4. Knowles theory of Andragogy (adult learning theory)
5. Obituary for UW-Madison Plants and Man professor Tim Allen (yes, I’m recommending you read an obituary) and another article about him which describes the “sandbox” I was honored to be part of briefly.
6. Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond
7. Sisbro Productions Main Page | Kids Stuff ("The Marvelous Musical Report of the Marine National Monuments" is a video Jess shows every year on the last day of school) | “The Riddle in a Bottle” Trailer
8. The Science of Thinking video
9. Dr. Derek Muller: The key to effective educational science videos | Veritasium Channel
10. Episode 3 Melissa Vining
11. Jenni Gritters: Website | LinkedIn | Instagram
12. Episode 2 Nancy Scales Coddington
13. Next Generation Science Standards introductory video by fellow MSSE graduate, Paul Andersen
14. NASA Spinoffs Game | Main Page | Technology Transfer

Follow Jess on Social Media:

LinkedIn | Instagram (Full Circle Wins) & Instagram (STEMJourneys)

A few things Jess and I discuss:

4:23 Our virtual grad school as preparation for COVID-19 pandemic adjustments

5:57 Jess’s Venn Diagram

8:09 Science vs STEM (and other acronyms)

12:27 Integrating academic subjects across student’s school day

18:21 Unique COVID impacts on current 6th graders due to kindergarten disruption

21:37 The problem with the phrase “learning loss”

24:44 Sharing the “why” behind what students are learning to get buy in

31:18 Science integration resources

38:17 Making people curious about you

41:59 Telling stories to bring meaning to your message and work

43:40 Improv Game

44:27 Sara’s "Brain Dump" idea

48:05 Rapidish Fire Questions

53:16 Combining game development ideas with teaching/learning

Quotes from the episode:

(Jess) If you're a science teacher, you can be talking with the math teacher. You can be talking with the art teacher. You can be talking with the social studies teacher. And going at bare minimum, to see what their lessons are doing at that time. Looking at the whole day of a sixth grader and how we can be giving those bridges. I've been saying bridges, just for lack of a metaphorical term, how we can be working together to at least make that student's experience more cohesive.

(Jess) What we're seeing now is just a completely, just unpracticed group of students. So I joke that we've just spent the last four months just getting these kids ready to do school. And that's something we do in September and Shocktober and not necessarily through January. So just now seeing our students develop those basic maturities to be available to learn.

(Jess) If they're asked to write a claim, well that's a claim in one class, but a hook in a different class or vice versa. Like maybe we should just call it all claim or call it all hook. Because if we can make those things a little bit more similar, then they at least have that connection

(Sara) How do you introduce your Renaissance Woman's self to somebody new who you're maybe hoping will fund your next big, way out there, wonderfully woven, connecting-the-dots idea. How do you introduce yourself to them so that they realize that you are this like complex, multi-passionate person, but not overwhelm them and talk their head off for 45 minutes when they just ask you, so tell me a little bit about yourself?

(Jess) Oh, you always ask the hardest questions, Sara.

(Sara) You know me, I like to jab it in there.

(Jess) I've tried all sorts of different elevator speeches. I resonated with things like I help bring science and media full circle. That's one that's kind of worked for me because then that allows them to ask whatever question that they want, that they happen to get in that moment, to ask me the next question. Because if I try to push it all down somebody's throat, they're not gonna get it. So if you've got a little teaser aspect to it, then that seems to help a little bit.

(Sara) Make them curious. Inspire curiosity.

(Jess) Yeah. Make it their idea. Make curiosity their idea, not your idea.

(Jess) Just about every major life-changing decision I've made has been on a boat. With somebody who has less than average access to a boat, I'm not near a boating community. It's not part of my life. I'm feeling like there's some tie in there. And I carried an elk out of the forest by myself once.

(Sara) Wow! OK. So with the boat one, I think there's a metaphor. And I'm expecting a really well thought out blog post or LinkedIn post about that because I feel like there's gotta be some sort of metaphor going on there.

(Jess) Challenge accepted.

Follow me, Renaissance Woman Sara Kobilka, on LinkedIn, where I put most of my social media energy and Facebook.

If you're extra curious, check out Renaissance Woman Consulting to learn more about some of the many types of work I do.

And should you care to support the production of this podcast, I'd love it if you'd buy me an oat milk cappuccino, the caffeinated beverage of my choice.

This podcast is hosted and edited by Sara Kobilka.

Theme music is by Brian Skellenger

Podcast distribution support provided by K.O. Myers of Particular Media

And we did that and it was a very small change with a very large result that kind of embedded the why without even a lot of effort. So it could be just the change that I needed to do to get through to these very short attention spans. But it was the first time in months that I was able to finish a story and finish a story line with them so that they could see the why instead of just thinking that they were going to the science class.

(sung) Connecting the Dots with The Renaissance People

Anyways, I welcome you back to another episode with a guest and I am back to talking to people that I've known for a long time. This episode is what happens when you put me in a room, a virtual room, with one of my friends from grad school. Today I'm gonna be talking to Jess Rowell, and we both went to Montana State University at Bozeman. Uh, it was actually a virtual grad school, so we didn't meet in person until the very end when we were finishing school.

We are gonna go diving pretty deep into some of the stuff that we were talking about and that we were studying in school. So this was a Masters of Science in Science Education program. But fear not. I tried my very best to define some of the jargon that came up. There may be some things that are not familiar to you, coming to you from the world of formal education. In which case, I encourage you to jump into the show notes 'cause I put all kinds of resources.

If we start talking about things that kind of sound interesting to you, I would encourage you to jump in there and check it out. What were some of the things that we talked about? Well, once again, Venn diagrams had a little bit of a love fest. We talk about the difference between science versus STEM, STEAM, STEMM (with two M's), STREAM, all that alphabet soup of different acronyms that there are out there.

We discussed all the work that Jess has been doing for integrating academic subjects across the school day for students. She shared a little bit about the unique. Impact that the COVID to 19 pandemic had on the students that she is currently teaching. Some of these things are actually gonna be pretty surprising to you. I know they surprised me. I got on a little bit of a tangent about my dislike of the term learning loss. And Jess shared a wonderful message that resonates whether you're a teacher or anyone just talking and trying to communicate with another person, which is all focused on the why.

So sit back, relax, don't forget to have your favorite drink so that you can take a drink with all these wonderful show notes. And here we go.

(glissando)

And so I will ask you, Jess, the question that I've asked every single one of my guests and that I have found absolutely intriguing and helps me create the title of your episode. Which of these terms aligns best with your identity? Renaissance Person, man, woman, whatever it might be? Multi-passionate? Generalist? Versatilist? Jack-, Jill-, Jay-of-all-trades? Boundary spanner? Or is there something else that you've come across that really aligned with who you think of when you think of yourself?

But I also like the, the Jack or Jill of more than one trade. I think that, especially going into the world of AI and, and finding our place in that. And what it means for us doing what we do as educators, or at least for me. That's where I like, well, I kind of see being able to speak in multiple industries as a handy function too.

So it's, it's kind of a tie between the two. But you had me at Renaissance, Sara.

[00:05:33] Jessica Rowell: Yeah. I had very few issues related to me at that time. In fact, that was a time where I shone. It was like, well, I've, I've been doing this for years. I don't know why everybody else is new to this. Teaching virtually synchronously every day was a new challenge, but we'd had so much background from connections virtually that it really did pay off during COVID.

[00:06:06] Jessica Rowell: A known quantity? My goodness! I had never really considered just how varied my background was until these conversations with you since grad school and all the work that we did as that kind of reconnaissance at that time.

And since then, I've kind of come full circle realizing that I've got the informal education from the nonprofit sector. I've got the space education and the space exploration education from my days at Space Center. And then corporate education from building curriculum programs, state and nationwide, and now formal education for a decade in the classroom. So it's been a real gift that my career has given me so many different types of roles, but all within the same Venn diagram of curriculum and instruction.

[00:07:14] Jessica Rowell: I've been fortunate to be primarily focused on sixth grade, but I've also done a lot of eighth grade. So this is the second year that I'm teaching both sixth and eighth grade. And this is the second year that I've now taught what I call repeat business. So I'm teaching eighth graders that I also taught as sixth graders in one of the smaller schools in my county in Maryland.

So it's not my first time having that experience. But even so, it's just, it's a completely transformative experience when you get to teach kids that you've already taught.

So I teach science and I also help with the STEM program. And in sixth grade, I primarily run the planning portion of our professional learning communities. So I, I get to run all of the sixth grade curriculum, all of the sixth grade outdoor education coordination, all of the, the Invent the Future or their STEM and invention focused programs. I have gotten help with those. It's a wild experience having been immersed with this particular age band for 10 years now, especially when you teach the families, all the, the younger siblings that go through. I've now gone through multiple full families.

[00:08:55] Jessica Rowell: Well, I mean, you're hitting on such a huge passion topic! We could be here for days on that. I see both sides of the coin on this one, especially after 10 years in practice. So there's the one side that science is being able to explain scientific phenomena. That's the main reason that we walk into a room full of completely different human beings, with very little like levels in their learning, science especially we just kinda get them all in one class. You have all the learning levels in one class. And with that knowledge of like taking, how to help them think critically and how to help them explain scientific phenomenon. Then, then what, what do we do with it? Well, let's, let's learn how to use technology to solve problems.

So that's how I've approached it with my pedagogy, and practice in the last decade. I do think I stand out from my peers in that way, in that, I can't change the fact that the course that I teach is called Investigations in Earth Science or Physical Science or Life Science, depending on the grade. But I can help bridge that pedagogy to the T and the E and M in STEM.

Then on the other side of the token, I help with the STEM focused courses, and I I have a very secondary role in those courses. But in those courses, even as an assist, I help with the outreach of helping families know why we're working together to solve problems and how we're solving those problems. Doing the engineering design process to identify problems. Put some place-based education in there of why are we trying to solve this problem in our community? And then, you know, if it's an invention based or some sort of computation based process that they're building to solve the problem that they've identified, that puts the STEM in it.

And as much as I would love to have that 100% integrated in at least my school or my campus, or where I have any sphere of influence, those two aren't synonymous. They really are different skill sets. Learning how to describe stuff and learning how to solve stuff are two different tasks.

And those tasks have been bifurcated into a science classroom versus your STEM course. So, there's pluses and minuses that come with that. But fortunately, when you work with that age range, as long as they see you every day, and as long as you're providing those bridges of, oh, well, let's use technology to solve that problem in science. And let's use what we learned in science to try to identify this problem in our community and use STEM, technology, engineering, and math to solve the problem, to build something, to solve it. At least they see the relationship between those two disciplines.

[00:12:15] Jessica Rowell: 100 percent! Pardon the pun.

[00:12:36] Jessica Rowell: STREAM for reading.

[00:12:54] Jessica Rowell: Yes. Specifically from the practitioner's point of view. And that is something that I've found that I, I wish to advocate for moving forward in the second half of my career. We do put a lot of emphasis on the importance of STEAM, STEM with two M's, STREAM, any of the integration that you want to include, that all of them are valid in their own ways.

And perhaps we would be more successful with that approach if we could separate it into what is the practitioner doing to help students understand the importance of that integration, or at least that overlap, versus what we're actually having the kids do.

And so looking at ourselves first as educators, that's where I've put a lot of organization in my practice. Like what are we doing right now? Are we identifying a problem? Are we observing phenomenon? Are we recording our observations? Are we using those observations to try to apply them to another area to synthesize data, to look at how this problem relates to another problem, or this phenomenon relates to another phenomenon?

An example is just helping students understand the direction of global winds and how they affect surface ocean currents, and how that's different than a deep ocean current. That's on the science side of things. But then later we could use that to try the build a boat that would go across the ocean with this minimal amount of materials in a STEM- focused day.

So that as a practitioner, we can easily do that. If you're a science teacher, you can be talking with the math teacher. You can be talking with the art teacher. You can be talking with the social studies teacher. And going at bare minimum, to see what their lessons are doing at that time.

Looking at the whole day of a sixth grader and how we can be giving those bridges. I've been saying bridges, just for lack of a metaphorical term. How we can be working together to at least make that student's experience more cohesive.

So it's a massive task at a team level across an entire grade span to adopt that type of cohesive approach across the staff is, is a really tall task. It's not necessarily within their job description.

But I'm always popping into the art teacher's room. Like, Hey, migratory bird day is coming up in May I give a coloring sheet. Can we turn it into a coloring contest? I've done similar coloring contest with our media center on Save a Straw. Including that as part of a student service learning project that they do for the county. Or I'm going to the social studies teacher and finding out, OK, how is your writing heuristics similar to what we're doing in science for a claim, evidence and reasoning.

Maybe we could just make our slides look the same. Because kids are overwhelmed with the task of writing. So maybe if we made the task of writing a little bit more similar, homogenous across different topics, then they'd understand that the goal is still the same for the students. We're just needing to make the practice a little more consistent.

So my focus in helping understand how to do STEAM or STEM, whatever you wanna call it, is more about what we can be doing as practitioners to just make it more accessible for ourselves and other students.

And without that camaraderie or that community in a school, if you're doing it from an organic level, like I am, not as a school or a county mandate or initiative, then it does put the impetus on teachers individually to feel excited to do that. But you get results fast.

And that's, that's been one of my most exciting realms. So even asking the math teacher to look at a map that we're doing on winds, global winds or ocean currents, and then them writing a question about ratios of water or wind or some relationship between natural variables on land. Then the kids answering that, knowing that they just did that a week prior in their math class, like that's where you get the light bulbs. So I guess it comes from integration, but after 10 years, I have not figured out the formula to get other people on board with that kind of approach. I just keep doing it on my own.

[00:16:39] Jessica Rowell: I had not gotten there. You got there for me. Thank you.

One of those questions that we've heard 40 bazillion times, when it comes to math class, when am I gonna ever use this again? You're teaching me ratios, when am I gonna ever use this again? But what you're doing is you're helping the teachers see that they can give their students an opportunity to use this again, and not just in the future. Like someday when you're cooking, you're gonna have to do ratio. No, it doesn't have to be the future. It can be like next week in social studies. Or it could be in art class or something like that. And you're connecting that dot in a shorter timeframe, which is important for children and young people because they aren't thinking about that future when they have their own children. And they're not thinking about, oh yes, when I'm in college.

Like, you have to help students, especially when you're thinking about what you're gonna inspire them with, you have to think more short term. You don't tell students who are in sixth grade about college. You say when you're in eighth grade, when you're in high school.

And that means so much more to them.

[00:18:26] Sara Kobilka: 'cause they haven't been around that long.

[00:18:54] Sara Kobilka: What do you mean by manual dexterity for people who aren't familiar with that or executive function?

[00:19:02] Sara Kobilka: That's true!

[00:19:12] Sara Kobilka: We'll find it and add it in the show notes.

[00:19:16] Sara Kobilka: Take a drink!!

So the ripples that I'm directly observing right now, and maybe this won't always be the case, but certainly right now is the confusion between a conversation or instruction. So there's a lot of rhetoric out there.

The specific year of the kids just constantly interrupting. They're not trying to be disruptive. They're not trying to be rude or create a, a dynamic of, you know, adversity in the classroom. They just cannot let a human being finish another sentence. That's a skill of listening, just a response and an answer.

And so we're kind of past the concern of age appropriate responses to direction or indirection, but just like what skills they need to be able to respond to instruction. And anything traditional, regardless of it being too formal or too claustrophobic or, you know, not addressing all the learners' needs.

I, I think teachers do a great job of responding to all the students' individual learning needs. Some need to be able to move around, some need to be able to be available one day and have their head done the next day. I think there's a lot that teachers are already doing to inherently address multiple learning styles in the classroom. That's our job, that's what we're trained to do.

But what we're seeing now is just a completely, just unpracticed group of students. So I joke that we've just spent the last four months just getting these kids ready to do school. And that's something we do in September and Shocktober and not, not necessarily through January.

Um, so just now seeing our students develop those basic maturities to be available to learn. That's the executive function side. And then the other parts of that are, you know, just what they physically can and can't do with their bodies. The holding scissors, holding pens, holding pencils, spending time either coloring or labeling or working and understanding the concepts of what a label diagram gives them.

And for us, the more often we can have them work with the same label diagram, the better. Because we want them working through, reflecting on their progress each day by adding more information and more interaction with labeled phenomenon. But also just having them develop skills. I mean, even just the quality of an arrow that they can draw to something and label it. We're seeing very little practice of being able to do these kinds of things. So there's some very basic skills that there's a gap in right now.

[00:22:16] Jessica Rowell: Yep.

[00:22:22] Jessica Rowell: Me neither.

Are people, other than you and your fellow teachers, are people in levels higher up who could actually make a difference having conversations about these things? Or is it that the teachers are kind of stuck figuring it out on their own?

So, you know, should the curriculum have been adapted for that? I, I, I'm really not sure. I think we're just now learning. I think by the time these students go through the K12, then we'll know what they learned and what they didn't know. And we're trying to, you know, not build the airplane while it's in flight, but fix it before it is in flight.

Like, there's just so much going on to diagnose that and, and that's not within the teacher's realm of understanding. That's not what they signed up for. They're tasked to try to get the students to be able to do those things.

[00:23:51] Jessica Rowell: Yeah, a lot. a lot. Extreme burnout the teachers.

It can be a lot. And I've observed that. Upon reentry from COVID. 'cause every year has been a totally different set of challenges that are very different from the year before. This year has really stood out for that. So for me, I guess I've found some intrinsic inspiration. Well all the more reason to try to make sure that there's some, at least visual, consistency between one class to another.

If they're asked to write a claim, well that's a claim in one class, but a hook in a different class or vice versa. Like maybe we should just call it all claim or call it all hook. Because if we can make those things a little bit more similar, then they at least have that connection. I can't speak to everything that students learned when they were at home in kindergarten in their interruptions. But I can say that, I'll say rebellious, that, you know, why do I need to know this? Um, definitely stands out.

So, so I do focus on like, why are we learning this? And, and I'm sure a lot of teachers have adopted that into their practice. We should always be doing that. But my slides almost always begin now with why are we doing this? What is the why?

And the why is to be able to describe anything. It doesn't have to be a scientific phenomenon, it's just anything. Can you describe the thing that is happening right now and identify some solutions? Or at least how other people have approached solving this problem. And can you even, visualize yourself solving this problem through making a diagram or even cutting something out or building something.

So all the more reason to involve hands-on STEM activities as much as possible in the science classroom. Just to try to integrate those tasks. It provides more interest for them and it provides more, more buy-in. So as challenging as these last couple of years have been, it has been inspiring like, well, what can I do better?

What can I do to really bridge these gaps that they're having without working harder?

And so the idea is when you teach adults, you have to think differently. It is a little bit more that, you youth... I don't the idea, which comes from the idea of behavioralism, which is like, kids are a sponge and you just pour the knowledge in and they're gonna soak it up. Most educators do not believe that anymore. They believe in other different theories of learning about cognitive interaction, social, all these different things.

But kids are inherently drawn to learning new things and exploring new things and asking questions and all that sort of stuff. And school and school learning is more natural to them, I would guess, versus with adults, they want to be able to apply with their learning. So one of the pillars that Knowles came up with is that if you're doing adult education, you need to give the why to the adults to get buy-in.

So I use that a lot in the workshops that I lead. So I might be leading a workshop on disability and accessibility awareness as I did, with Meryl Evans, amazing person for that topic. Follow her on LinkedIn. I'll put a link in the show notes. We, We worked with out-of-school educators in the state of New York. And we did a four-part training series about like 1 0 1 for accessibility. We talked about accessibility in the workplace. We talked about engaging with youth, and then we talked about being an ally.

And for each of those, we gave them a why at the beginning. Like, why should you pay attention to this? Why should you not have another window open on your computer? 'cause we were also doing this virtually. Why shouldn't you have another window open on your computer? Or why shouldn't you be working, you know, feeding your dog and doing whatever. Because in virtual land you can do all those other things.

And if they don't have that buy-in, adults are not going to spend their, limited amount of intellectual focus on you're doing. And that's why mandatory training, if they don't do it, people. Mentally check out. They're, they're like, why do I have to be here? This is not even applicable to what my job is.

[00:28:27] Sara Kobilka: And so it's really interesting to see those youth a little bit more aligned with these theories of how we educate adults because maybe they were forced to grow up faster? I don't know. What do you think?

And, I just kind of immediately applied it. To my stubborn, reluctant learners and had results. So went with it. Nobody told me to do that. If that came organically just as a, as the need and the, the necessity created invention, then I'll take the happy accident. But it has made a big difference.

And in the reflection as a result of that change in strategy, I see it directly reaching these students who have substantially interrupted attention spans too. So just with that overnight change.

An example is, I've, uh, partly in inspiration and working with you and learning more about Renaissance Woman, I changed one of my lesson introductions to how could I use my travels to actually learn with my students on topics I don't know anything about.

So the example is the Silk Road in China, and how the climate to a certain degree must have allowed for the Silk Road to be even possible. And we were studying geography and climate and science. And so I threw up the pictures of me having the great fortune of being able to go to China and not know very much about the Silk Road or its history while I was there, just the basics that were taught. And how I heard that they were learning about the, the dynasties and the creation of the Silk Road and all that over history.

So I posted that as my, why. We're learning this in science right now because I wanna learn what y'all are learning in social studies and let's connect that. Because I'm not sure if they're talking about the climate across this massive geography in social studies. And I saw it with my own eyes, just how big of an area that we're talking about in China myself. Like, let's learn and by the end of the week let's be able to talk about it.

And we did that and it was a very small change with a very large result that kind of embedded the why without, even, without even a lot of effort. So it could be just the change that I needed to do to get through to these very short attention spans. But it was, it was the first time in months that I was able to finish a story and finish a story line with them so that they could see the why instead of just thinking that they were going to the science class, whether they thought it was boring or not.

So I guess that challenge to educators trickles down in different ways in practice, and I was, I was lucky to, to bump into something that seems to be working for now.

[00:31:19] Jessica Rowell: Please.

[00:31:46] Jessica Rowell: Oh, amazing book!

[00:31:51] Jessica Rowell: That book!

[00:31:52] Jessica Rowell: So good.

[00:32:30] Jessica Rowell: That's really my life dream. I mean, that's why I'm here today is to learn those skills. For what filmmakers that I know who've been successful with doing the same kinds of culminating projects like Riddle in the Bottle by the Sisbro Productions. I have to drop them and I have to put them in the show notes. They are the massive in inspiration that brought me from running wildlife film festivals through all of my career to today. Like I'm here to drop their name.

Like Daniel Kwaman with his short stories and magazines of pulling all of the recreation with hydrology and history together, whatever the concepts are. I've always been highly inspired by that and I'd like to see that in these next steps of my career. I'm kind of in the reflection stages right now of like what is most inspiring to me.

And, I think this, this concept, let alone you building a platform for people to pull those concepts together. And with the connecting the dots theme, I think it says a lot to speak to people like me. Like, no, I, I can make a meaningful contribution. I may not know how yet, I may need to figure out how to pull all these skills together. But it's out there and there's, there's people who wanna work together to build those visions.

I argue that you are one, you have a Renaissance mindset. You are a person who loves to learn for the sake of learning. And you also know inherently that serendipity will arise and you'll find a place to use that information to share it with others, to teach other people to like have an impact. So from that standpoint, I think you are, you are there in the mental.

But you're still in the process in your career. And what I'd be curious to hear from you is to this point in time, where have you felt most fulfilled as a Renaissance Person? When have you had those, even if it's just moments, not necessarily the job itself, but maybe it's a moment, maybe it's a project, maybe it is a collaborative team that you've been on, where you're like, yes! I am embraced fact that I've traveled the world, that I wanna combine literacy and science. For the fact that I care about diversity, equity, inclusion, access.

Like some places really get you and embrace you and celebrate you and recognize you. And others don't get it. And I know, um, Melissa Vining and I talked about how sometimes there's struggles in the formal education world that at least in the big picture of formal education, this is what we do, this is how we've always done it. It's very slow to make changes because it's a very big system that's been around for a long time. But then you can also find those moments within those settings where you can do that kind of work. So where have you found that?

So I, I think that the question is like, well , do you mean Sara, that I would go off into the world and independently produce these things? Because it's a lot of fun, it's a lot of work. I've tried it in a couple of different ways. But if there's an enterprising focus to that, then, I'm there for it.

So that, that's one piece. But then there's the times that I've just been given the task in a role, like you said, being on a collaborative team and being able to do that. And I, I was very fortunate to lead a statewide and nationwide effort with my curriculum groups in Texas. And that, that was a really wonderful opportunity.

So with something like that, where the door opens and you're given an opportunity to build curriculum programs, and in these cases, innovative curriculum programs that really push the user interface of how students are using the curriculum and how it's aligned and how the language is accessible to them. That I enjoyed probably the most. Because those are where you get to just call up old favors with people that you worked with years ago. And then finding out oh, well I'm involved with this writing project and I would love to write for that and I'd love to contribute to this program.

And so building programs from scratch was always kind of what I was famous for. It's what I've been recruited for with that skill. So I've, I get to build new projects with an innovative focus kind of naturally. That's, that's where I'm passionate about as well.

But those are episodic. Those aren't necessarily the day job. So I guess the answer to your question is both. I've been able to make my own opportunities where I've been lucky enough to. But also jump on opportunities to build new programs with innovative groups. Um, and I'd like to do more of that as well.

[00:37:47] Jessica Rowell: Mm.

[00:38:20] Jessica Rowell: Oh, you always ask the hardest questions, Sara.

[00:38:28] Jessica Rowell: Well, it's unfortunate that there is a lesser satisfying way to say, I help run a middle school science and STEM program for, you know, one of the most diverse counties in the United States, let alone Maryland. So like that in itself is, is a pretty rewarding introduction. But it only speaks to the teacher side of me.

Um, so beyond that, you know, I've tried all sorts of different elevator speeches. I resonated with things like I help bring science and media full circle. That's one that's kind of worked for me because then that allows them to ask whatever question that they want, that they happen to get in that moment, to ask me the next question. Because if I try to push it all down somebody's throat, they're not gonna get it. So if you've got a little teaser aspect to it, then that, that seems to help a little bit.

[00:39:16] Jessica Rowell: Yeah. Make it their idea. Make, make curiosity their idea, not your idea. I've tried things like I am putting the serious into making STEM easier.

I'm putting the STEM into systems thinking. I've tried anything that's about me trying to bring two different things together is the fastest tagline that I've been able to do. Instead of running down a list of things that I've done that maybe they do or do not relate to. But everybody can get behind a message of bringing the reading and relevance to STEM and science.

Everybody can get behind the message of literacy and STEM literacy. Or making STEM fun or making science easier. I've tried to reframe any of those quick introductions to what do they care about. And really, everybody cares about making science easier and more accessible for all students and making it more fun and making reading easier and part of science.

[00:41:02] Jessica Rowell: It comes from, if I'm multi-passionate about anything, it is that. There's so much emphasis on teachers focusing on making sure that students feel heard, students feel welcome, students feel safe with their learning. It's all about how you make them feel. I'm like, yeah, no, I, I can take that lesson and I can apply it to these much broader areas that I'm trying to reach with my approach.

And nobody's available until you make sure that they know that they're ready to hear you. And, that comes from of years of working with great people like you and, and again, this platform that you're building to help other people hear that and resonate with it, that's unique in itself. It's an inspiration at its own level.

But yeah, if you're being asked, you know, what do you do for a living? It's pretty enticing to turn it around into something they're gonna wanna actually listen to.

[00:42:34] Jessica Rowell: I had underestimated how valuable that skill is for a long time. I feel like without the sense of community that you're building, it's easy to feel alone or like a maverick in that. And I used to think that that type of motivation was ongoing, always fulfilled. Never run outta gas. Never burn out as long as you're seeing through with your best self and showing up with that for yourself and others. And now I understand, OK, yeah. You can still show up with that message that you're trying to get at with other people so that they have the why to even listen to you. But you need to make sure that there's a self-fulfilling aspect in that. That I'm not doing this just so I can feel heard by you at the moment.

I'm truly doing this because this is, this is important. But without that sense of belonging or community that you are building in this platform or other people who are doing the same platform, then it's easy to feel alone or isolated in that. So cheers to you for bringing that together. I, I see that being a very valuable thing for a lot of people.

[00:43:35] Sara Kobilka: I think it's time for us to play a little bit cause playing is fun. And I would like to play my fill-in-the-blank game with you, which I know you've listened to other episodes.

[00:43:45] Sara Kobilka: This one! OK, improv. Here we go. Improv! Get ready!

[00:43:49] Sara Kobilka: OK, I'm gonna try to come up with one that I haven't used yet. Let's think about it. So, the sentence is, you're gonna complete the sentence. You know, you're a Renaissance Person if... So, I will force myself to go first and try not to come up with the same idea I've used before. You know, you are a Renaissance Person if you have post-it notes or voice memos or scratches on napkins all over your house with all these different things that have inspired you. And then when you go back to read them, you're like, what??

[00:44:27] Sara Kobilka: You know what? I actually literally posted today on LinkedIn that my next thing for the Renaissance People Community is something to address that. What I do is I start drafts of emails. And I put my idea into an email draft because I can access my email on my phone really quickly, on my computer, whatever. I looked, I'm like, I have like 250 draft emails. I should do something with it.

So when we were stuck home in the winter storm, I set a timer and I said, OK. I created a Google Sheet, four columns, one that had date, one that was just for putting the content of that draft email. Third one was for what am I gonna do with this? And fourth was completed.

My rule was that all I did was copy and paste and put the content of the draft email into that content category and then right next to it, what's my to do with it? And I had two exceptions. My one exception was if I read it and I couldn't figure out what it meant, I just deleted it. I'm not gonna keep it just in the hopes that I'm gonna someday figure out my, you know, chicken scratch, if you will. And then the second rule was I could complete the task in less than one minute, I was allowed to do it. So a, a few of the things, all I wanted to do was like copy and paste them into something that I had already organized. And I was gonna do initially like 30 minutes and I ended up doing like an hour and a half and got a huge chunk of my draft emails put away. And so I'm actually gonna start a group. I'm brainstorming what the name is gonna be deciding, you know, brain dump, clean up on aisle three and download are a few ideas that I'm asking...

[00:45:58] Sara Kobilka: ...on LinkedIn to vote for which one they like.

By the time this podcast episode comes out, I will have already decided, so sorry folks, you don't get to vote. But my thought is, let's bring Renaissance People together for 40 minutes, 'cause I don't have a paid account for Zoom, so I can only do a 40-minute meeting. We'll spend 30 minutes just dumping stuff into an organized filing system.

And then the last 10 minutes sharing with each other, like what we learned? How did it feel? What are we inspired and excited to do? And that'll just be like once a month we'll meet and like clean up.

[00:46:29] Sara Kobilka: That's my idea.

[00:46:43] Sara Kobilka: There you go. OK, so now you've, you've done yours. Should we do another round?

[00:46:49] Sara Kobilka: I believe in you, um, you know, you are a Renaissance Person if... I’m blanking, I have some written down somewhere, but I feel like it'd be cheating to go back. 'cause I've had like months to brainstorm this and you've had days. You know, you're a Renaissance Person if you enjoy hosting parties where you invite friends who have what seems like no overlapping similarities between them, and you're able to curate an amazing group of people and have a fabulous conversation.

[00:47:24] Sara Kobilka: No. OK. You give an example and then you have to fill in the blank again.

[00:47:54] Sara Kobilka: Love that. Are you talking about a particular Renaissance Woman?

[00:48:03] Sara Kobilka: I love it. I love it.

[00:48:05] Sara Kobilka: OK. Well, we're gonna go to the very last part of the podcast, which is my rapidish fire questions. You don't have to be completely rapid on them. But, we'll give you the opportunity to be somewhat succinct. So what is one metaphor that you find yourself using frequently? The metaphor that I'd like to share is that I often find myself talking about weaving. And, bringing things together.

I talk about it in the area of STEM when I talk about the Next Generation Science Standards, which are literally drawn as three woven strands pulled together. For those who are unfamiliar with it, it's the idea of like the science facts you need to know, which are called the DCI, disciplinary core ideas. It's knowing how many planets there are, that sort of thing.

The Science and Engineering Practices is the second strand. And these are the things that scientists actually do, that engineers do. They make charts, they ask questions. All these things that I think in you and I have both worked in the informal science education world and we spend a lot of time really practicing those things and worry, maybe less so about memorizing the facts, which is the stereotypical idea of science and not what science is.

And then the third is the Disciplinary Core Ideas. And I think this is something, this is where I see you as a rockstar. Because the disciplinary core ideas are things that span across disciplines. So it's things that biologists and chemists and physics and engineers that they all do. But they're also written in such a way that they expand to history. They expand to art. And so it's things like seeing patterns. If we just said seeing patterns, you see patterns in art class. You see patterns in history. You see patterns in biology. And so those are the really expansive dot connecting beyond just the STEM. Whether it's a woven thread, whether it's weaving together this network of people and all of these resources, that idea of weaving really, resonates with me.

And I even applied for a job once to be a network weaver. I didn't get it, but I was still, I was still part of that community and it was a pretty awesome job description.

That's a really good gift to be looking at things with that. And I guess for me, it's always just been the full circle. What two worlds are you trying to bring together and how are you bringing 'em together in a seamless way? And it's maybe not two worlds. But the concept of varying themes or varying topics. How are you bringing 'em together full circle? And the concept that we've already maybe explored some of these areas, but then as we've learned about other things, we come back full circle and we see these things.

I did have a friend argue that why would you wanna see things that you'd already seen? So there is a little bit of a pragmatic flaw to the concept of a full circle. But that's always stood out with me. I mean, it's, it's in my tag name. It's in my full circle classroom concepts. Like it, it's all there. But there is a metaphor, if that truly meets that definition, it would be full circle. What, what worlds are we bringing together full circle and why?

[00:52:11] Jessica Rowell: I listened to that and I was really inspired by that. I've done quite a bit with hand motions, especially when we were teaching virtually of using hand motions to connect the concepts of heat transfer with other ideas or whatever the quick inspiration just to fill in that moment. But yeah, the concept of movement with any learning is always going to be a connect for anybody. And good job on highlighting that in your work.

[00:52:37] Jessica Rowell: Yes. Yeah, Nancy's awesome.

Well, OK. What is, you've shared some of these, but what's another rabbit hole that you've recently gone down? What's something that you've been digging into that doesn't connect to anything else that you, or I'm sure it connects but isn't directly related to anything you've said so far?

So like D & D. Oh, just this golden chest of content that we're sitting on for bringing in any element of game development, game concepts and learning. There was an example recently that came up. But anytime you can bring in the element of randomness in games, rolling the dice, spinning the wheel, that has been such a fun, refreshing way to look at some of these recent problems that we're having, of just making things easier in our own lives, let alone our own classrooms.

So anything game or the history of magic or the history of games, that has been a big inspiration of mine. I'd really like to bring that into space exploration education. Because we don't get to teach enough of that in middle school, and that's just such a huge basis of STEM careers and talk about the golden thread and space applies to everything, right?

So that, that's been a huge level of inspiration for me. It's in its infancy, but it's still fun. I just got done with like playing a little, like, let's look at the history of Magic and see how I could apply it to this week's lessons on geology.

[00:54:29] Jessica Rowell: Just, just games. Yeah, just games with our games. It's been so much fun.

[00:54:45] Jessica Rowell: Well, and if it's still out there, I, I hope it is. I was hoping to put in the show notes the NASA spinoffs wheel. There had been a game that they'd made for kids with the NASA spinoffs. And you could easily access for any grade, like just spinning the wheel to get all sorts of different spinoffs that the NASA program had made just because those inventions that had been made in space directly helped the people on Earth and vice versa. And that, I have to give credit to them. I, I can't find it, but when I do, I'll put it in the show notes.

And so it's people who are involved in that, like connecting the dots work of connecting scientists outside. And one of the things she did was she put up a slide and it included all these innovative things that came from NASA's research. And it was really intriguing to see. There have been times where people have pushed back against research 'cause they didn't understand.

One big thing was when they're making fun of people who built a robot that could fold laundry. And people were like, yes, but this could lead to a tool to help people who have lost a limb. This tendency if you don't understand the science research and then you just hear this title that seems kind of funny, that it's easy to make fun of it or just be like, that makes no sense. Why do we need to know what plant will grow in space? But then we can take what plant will grow in space and then we can test that out in Liberia, in Antarctica, we can bring it back to Earth.

[00:56:33] Sara Kobilka: cause...

[00:56:35] Sara Kobilka: Just cause it's research in space, doesn't mean that it doesn't apply to us. It's the why. We have to have that why, and we have to help people understand the why should I care about this?

[00:57:03] Sara Kobilka: I love it.

OK, and then the final question I'm gonna ask you before finding how people can share information and learn more from you is, I wanna ask you, is there anything else from your background that might surprise people? What's a juicy nugget, Jess's history, that people, even people who maybe have known you for quite a while, your colleagues would be like, what you did what?

So the idea to build the interactive reading passages was on my travels from here to there. And the writing my thesis was done on a boat in Belize for a month, and I've just had so many wonderful opportunities that I haven't really, had time to connect. But now looking at my whole family of world travelers and how many stories we have not been able to tell because we've been so busy doing life. And knowing that just about every major life-changing decision I've made has been on a boat, with somebody who has less than average access to a boat. I'm not near a boating community. It's not part of my life. Like, I'm feeling like there's some tie in there. And I carried an elk out of the forest by myself once.

[00:58:40] Jessica Rowell: Challenge accepted.

[00:58:58] Jessica Rowell: Hi John!

And I am almost certain that either we were in a meeting or everybody was like posting their like, hi, my name is, and telling a little bit about themselves. And they introduce you thread and yours was, hi, I'm Jess. I'm currently in a boat off of an island in Greece and, interviewing scientists, for a project that I have, or something along that line. Like, I swear, you said that you were on a boat in that very first introduction when I met you. So I find it so intriguing that, you come back with the story.

[00:59:40] Sara Kobilka: You need to buy a houseboat lady! You gotta like move to the sea or a lake.

[00:59:57] Sara Kobilka: There we go. Well, so much research on like how we survive in space is done underwater

[01:00:05] Sara Kobilka: Yeah! OK, well we could go on forever. But I'm gonna cut our time, since we've been talking for almost an hour, and I wanna thank you for joining me. For folks who wanna continue following you on this Renaissance Woman journey, as these new ideas percolate and become something. What's the best way for them to continue to follow you and, and maybe reach out to you if they wanna collaborate?

[01:00:44] Sara Kobilka: Wonderful! Well thank you again Jess and I look forward to uh, chatting with you again soon.

[01:00:55] Sara Kobilka: We're awesome. Thank you.

(sung) Connecting the Dots with The Renaissance People