Tuesday, January 16, 2024
Brian Collins has taught general biology, AP biology, environmental biology, human anatomy/physiology, ecology, zoology, and ornithology at Unity High School for 23 years. In May of 2023, Collins was recognized by the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction and the Kohl Educational Foundation as a 2024 Wisconsin Teacher of the Year. Here he is in conversation with Kevin Anderson, science consultant at the DPI. This interview has been edited for space and clarity.
Kevin Anderson: Why are you a science teacher?
Brian Collins: I left full time, temporary jobs as a wildlife bio-tech to find a career in education, starting at Unity when I was 31. I am a career-change teacher. There is something exciting about exploring nature and making discoveries with people that motivates me. Seeing the excitement of a discovery reflected in the faces of my students brings me a lot of joy, and authentic learning brings out the best in people. I can’t really explain it, but there is a witty, hilarious, almost squirrelly sense of humor that pops up constantly in science, and it makes the relationships grown in the classroom so genuine an lasting.
As a biologist, I see everything through the lens of interdependence. People truly are products of their community. I think my teaching journey started very early, perhaps in the simple fact that my parents were bringing me into the wilderness before I could walk. I was deeply connected to nature in my childhood.
My father was a chemistry professor, and I often spent summer days hanging out with him in his office, his classrooms, and his labs, even watching him teach. He was very funny, and his students loved him. In my sophomore year of high school, I moved to Minneapolis with him for his sabbatical. I volunteered at the Bell Museum of Natural History where I learned how to build traveling nature education kits. Years later, one of my old Bell Museum colleagues convinced me to pursue my Masters Degree in Education and to become a teacher.
As a teacher, the friendships I make along the way continue to refine and build my craft and move me in my journey. Matt Berg, a biology teacher in a neighboring (and sports rival) school, has become one of my best friends. This friendship has built a hilarious, joyous, and celebratory correspondence and collaboration between our advanced science classrooms, further expanding our community of science amid cooperative learning and healthy rivalry
Kevin Anderson: How have you integrated Indigenous ways of knowing and doing (science) into your classroom? How has learning Ojibwemowin influenced your (science) teaching?
Brian Collins: Unity School District in Balsam Lake is nestled within the lands of the Saint Croix Chippewa of Wisconsin. While Native American students represent less than 15% of the student population at Unity, the human heart is also less than 15% of the body. We can’t live without it.
From my first day as a teacher at Unity, I have recognized the importance of understanding the place I live in and the perspectives and worldviews of the people I serve. I eagerly began pursuing local traditional Ojibwe cultural knowledge and Ojibwe language as well as a deeper sense of understanding of the youth in the Native American community. The Round Lake community responded enthusiastically, and the generosity of elders, parents, and students set me on a path of growth toward equity and inclusion, giving me tools to help our Native American students feel seen and substantively served in the science classroom.
Language is a key that unlocks cultural understanding, so I have been learning Ojibwemowin for almost 20 years. Incorporating authentic and appropriate worldviews into science curriculum takes hard work, community collaboration, and permission, and some creativity. It can’t be done alone.
In my zoology and general biology class, I am now teaching taxonomy with Ojibwe names and taxonomic systems together with Linnaean binomial nomenclature and English common names. Comparing these naming systems provides more insight into how different cultures arrive at scientific discovery and how worldview is incorporated into science.
Ojibwe language is wondrously descriptive. Once students learn some root lexicon of the language, a few name examples become eye-opening! For example, a white-tailed deer is “waawaashkeshi” and a firefly is “waawaatese”. The “waawaa” root refers to something that flashes and zigs and zags through the forest. Now imagine the “flag” of the white-tailed deer’s tail as it bounds and the flashing firefly in the forest, and you can experience “waawaa."
Incorporating Ojibwe language into my classroom does more than expand cultural knowledge and science knowledge. It also welcomes Native American students and signals that they belong, they are seen, and that this education is for them. I am rolling out a bright welcome mat that includes all of my students into the learning space.
Reach out to your tribal communities, show up often at their local Tribal Community Centers, and to get to know families. Learning about the Indigenous languages of students in the district and incorporating their worldviews will break barriers, bring students in, and will create stronger classroom communities. To avoid missteps and cultural appropriation, it is so important to be active in your community, to get to know the families of your students, and to ask permission of tribal elders as you develop your lessons and approaches.
I am a co-founder of Unity’s Ojibwe Language Program, an afterschool language revitalization program that has more recently moved into outdoor programming and outdoor exploration. We build on Ojibwe language skills while doing wolf tracking surveys, better understanding Ma’iingan (Wolf) and all of the language that we develop around the context of Ma’iingan. We also visit key bird migration stopover sites and spend time together on day paddles along the Saint Croix River. Immersive science exploration includes data collection, mathematical expression, and larger ecological concepts, all while living in Ojibwe Language and worldview contexts.
Kevin Anderson: Share a story of students finding joy as learners in your classroom.
Brian Collins:The climate in my classroom is one of authentic discovery, humor, and wit. Every student brings intelligence in one form or another to a process of exploration, so building community is the key to success in science. By the time things really get rolling, laughter and joy is part of our classroom culture.
In our advanced placement biology class, we study light dependent reactions using a leaf disc float assay, using small squares of spinach in a light bath of baking soda water. Plot spoiler: the depressurized leaf cuttings go through photolysis and begin filling up the spongy mesophyll with oxygen under white light and under red light. They rapidly float to the top of the water bath. However the unfortunate leaf cuttings placed under blue light show little sign of life, and those under green light show nothing at all. Well, that just isn’t fair! We ask: How will we make things right for our beloved spinach?
When all of the data has been collected, my AP bio students move the blue light and green light sample beakers under the white light and red light. And then the obvious happens, right? Of course! We have a pep rally for the leaf cuttings!
We clap, cheer, and eagerly watch to see if we can motivate them! And the leaf cuttings float! It is a celebration of success and a bonding experience. When we have our laugh, and all of the energy settles, I reveal to my students that they have just completed a sort of control in the experiment. They have shown that leaf activity, which is stale under one wavelength, boosts when more wavelengths are present!
Celebrations and discoveries are what make science memorable. Once my students have built a responsible community, we begin to fill the explorations with as much celebration and good humor as real science, building permanence in the learning.
Clean and careful dad jokes are always good. As my freshmen mature, they begin to understand that lots of joy can be felt when the fun is constructive and intentional, when fooling around is safe and productive and generates data instead of being destructive and chaotic. Mythbusters’ Adam Savage once said, “Remember, kids, the only difference between screwing around and science is writing it down!”
Kevin Anderson: What, if anything, would you change about our current education system?
Brian Collins: We need to put students into a more relaxed system of greater accountability to learning. It sounds paradoxical, but I believe students do best when they are goal-oriented and know what they are after, when they understand why they are in school.
Students’ minds need to be respected by school systems, giving students and teachers alike the time, space, and staffing necessary to support, to build, to reflect and to digest, to synthesize knowledge, and to rigorously apply what is learned.
Kevin Anderson: What advice do you have for new teachers? What needs to be done to best support new teachers?
Brian Collins: New teachers should seek to stay in a district long-term. Every teacher will face challenges and even dissatisfaction at some time in their career, but teaching and learning is also about building community. Staying put in a district is immensely satisfying, even if it takes patience and a lot of hard work! In my 23rd year at Unity School District, I now have the joy of teaching the children of my former students.
My experience as a teacher is valuable, but my reflective nature means that I’m firmly in my 23rd FIRST year of teaching. I reinvent my path every year, because I understand how to make it stronger.
Every new teacher should be surrounded by mentors. School districts should support and mentor new teachers as they figure out their crafts. Teaching is difficult, with many unexpected twists and turns. Experienced teachers should be involved in mentorship every year.
Also, dad jokes build resilience in teens. I tell dad jokes, because that’s how “eye roll.”