The Blue Hill Observatory Proudly Presents an Interview with our New Director of STEM Education, Krista Fincke
Meet Krista: “In her own words,” with colleague, Cheryl Cummings, Director of Strategic Partnerships
Q: Your teaching career has focused on middle school science education. Please share: Why middle school education?
A: Middle school science has a special place in my heart because of the importance of middle school education in general. We know that students enter middle school often with an excitement around science and math and that they leave middle school with a significantly lower excitement. For educators this means middle school represents a pivotal point in a student’s educational journey where that excitement can be fostered, or it can drop off.
Teachers can help to cultivate a student’s interest within those three to four years by harnessing that excitement into a vision for future careers in science and math. The goal is to help students to use their skills and creativity to think about their futures and what the workforce could mean for them.
Q: As we talk about helping youth to envision future careers, I am interested to know at what time in your life did you know you wanted to be a teacher?
A: I think the point in my life that I realized I wanted to teach was when I got in front of children consistently. I felt an eagerness and excitement from students that was reflective, bouncing from me to them, and back to me. That’s what creates an amazing learning environment.
As of today, I have taught middle school science in a few different capacities for approximately ten-years. I added to the depth and breadth of my science knowledge while tutoring in STEM at the high school level. I also worked as an instructional coach for science teachers for two years while living in Washington state. At Excel Academy in East Boston where I am coming from, I was the Dean of Curriculum and Instruction and, then Director of STEM.
Q: Krista, your expansive background and expertise in science teaching, curriculum development, and instructional coaching, mirrors exactly what the Blue Hill Observatory needs right now to advance new educational programs that will maximize learning opportunities for youth. In relation to the work you are leading at the Blue Hill Observatory, can you share from your standpoint which is most important, teaching, curriculum, or instructional coaching?
A: All three are equally important and function within a Venn Diagram. As a teacher I can be a role model when other teachers are at the Observatory. I can show them, in what I hope is an exciting and authentic way, what the possibilities are for learning at the Observatory and from the supporting content we are providing in the classroom. Currently at the Observatory, curriculum development is perhaps our highest priority as I am in the process of redesigning our programs and exploring all the Observatory’s educational possibilities with support from outside advisors. I want our programs to be exciting to both teachers and students as they are the starting point from which everything else flows. If we don’t have strong educational content, teaching and instructional coaching won’t matter.
Q: From the standpoint of curriculum what are some of the educational components you wish to build that are unique to the Observatory. Since the Observatory is rather complex due to its lengthy history, its location, and data collection, is it a challenge to bring those to life for children?
A: There is a natural excitement and curiosity from students when they see the Observatory for the first time because it looks so different from any other places they have been. They are surprised to learn people once lived there and collected data every single day—and, that the data collection is still taking place today.
The Observatory has a powerful asset in their long-standing history of data collection, and I intend to lean on that real and local data to provide students with the opportunity to analyze and interpret our data sets and to help them to draw their own conclusions.
I think giving students the opportunity to dig into our data is important and it is a skill we need students of this generation to build , so they can become critical thinkers and problem solvers. I will add from my own experience as an educator. There are state and national level curriculum that is strong, however because it isn’t local it is hard to help students to connect to it. At the Observatory we can help students to become citizen scientists by presenting them with local data and having them analyze it themselves through place-based learning. For example they can explore what the weather was on a particular day in history or climate trends in New England over time.
Q. Can you share the differences between teaching in a formal environment, such as a public school, versus an informal environment like the Blue Hill Observatory?
A: I think the classroom environment and the way it is set-up is critical for student success because they live it every single day. Informal learning environments are equally important because they help youth to make real world connections to the knowledge they are gaining in the classroom.
We know that disproportionate numbers of students get access to learning experiences outside the classroom that help to build their understanding of the world. The Observatory is committed to reaching a population of students that likely would not have the opportunity to come to the Blue Hills without intentional outreach to their schools by our team and with support from philanthropy.
I see the Director of STEM Education role at the Observatory as an opportunity to build a love of learning, and STEM, and a love of the outdoors among all youth. I want to help students to connect to the environment and to feel a responsibility for it; they are the stewards of the environment. I want to give youth the agency of empowerment. Teachers work very hard to bring as many outside resources as possible into the classroom, which is amazing, however it isn’t the same as learning about the environment while you are in it. Learning outside the classroom is critically important, and I feel it is my job to make that accessible to students.
Q: It has been a delight to talk with you today. I believe our readers will be inspired by all that you shared. I have one final question. You have been working at the Blue Hill Observatory since March, have there been any standout moments you would like to share?
A: Yes, and it relates to what I shared earlier about helping students to connect outside the classroom. I was leading students from the Dearborn STEM Academy in Roxbury on an educational guided hike up Blue Hill. At the very end as we were walking down the path to the buses one student who was particularly quiet, but clearly absorbing information from the trip stated, “This trip brought so many things we learned in the classroom to life.”
What he said was so profound in the moment that his teacher and I both got out our phones to capture his words. He was connecting concepts from the classroom to his experience at Blue Hill, a place that was essentially is in his backyard, yet he’d never been.
