President’s Message-Josh Tharaldson Spring is coming! I think it is safe to say that we are all looking forward to the warmer spring days that are ahead after several major snowstorms and near record setting cold this winter all across the state. Through it all, the Minnesota Science Teachers Association Board of Director representatives hosted sessions in every region of the state allowing teachers, administrators and others the opportunity to provide feedback on both the first and second drafts of the Minnesota K-12 academic science standards. Thank you for taking time to attend these sessions to learn about the drafts of the science standards and also for providing your input on the drafts. I would encourage you to stay connected throughout the remainder of the standards revision process and watch for the final draft of the revised standards to be published in May or June on the Minnesota Department of Education website. At our last board retreat, each of the board members were asked a simple question to spark a broad conversation about MnSTA membership. “How did you initially get involved with MnSTA?” was asked to shed some light on how our current board of directors became involved with the work of MnSTA. My own answer to that question goes something like this: As a new teacher in a two person science department I was approached by my co-worker Jim Pedersen who was soon completing his 40th year of service to science education and he asked if I was planning to attend the upcoming state science conference in Duluth. To be completely honest, I did not know what he was talking about, thus, I asked him additional questions to find out more. Jim went on to tell me that there is an annual conference focused entirely on providing professional development for science teachers with numerous sessions dedicated to each of the main strands. After hearing all the reasons to attend, I filled out the staff development paperwork for my district and attended my first Minnesota ConferPresidents message .................................continuted on page 4
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Teacher Feature Joe Cossette is our feature teacher for this issue of the MnSTA newsletter. Joe is in his 5th year as a teacher, teaching IB Physics and Honors Physical Science at Minnetonka High School. Before his teaching career, Joe worked as a Mechanical Development Engineer at Seagate Technology in Shakopee. Joe’s favorite lessons involve challenging, groupworthy tasks. Lately he has really gotten into designing escape room and murder mystery style lessons to help his students practice in engaging ways. One lesson in particular that he feels embodies this spirit is his Kinematics Crime Scene. Students complete this task once they have had the opportunity to practice using the kinematic equations to describe the motion of a uniformly accelerating object. In this task, they are challenged to figure out who is responsible for breaking Wilma Wilshire’s priceless antique vase. Instead of providing all of the information describing the scenario like a word problem, groups split up and each member becomes an expert on one piece of the mystery. After some consultation with others stationed at the same clue, the students return to their original groups where they are responsible for assembling their clues to identify the culprit. The way that the clues are written, each student must use their physics content to locate the important information and each clue is required to solve the mystery so the group benefits from hearing the voice of each member. He spends a lot of time preparing and organizing his teaching materials so that during class he can spend more time interacting with students and being flexible with his plans. Humor plays a really important role in his interactions with students and he has no problem making a fool out of himself by parodying popular music with science lyrics in front of the class. He loves puzzles and really enjoys challenging his students with tasks that push their critical thinking skills. Technology is a key part of his curriculum and he is constantly looking for new ideas to try out. Joe loves learning and getting excited about interesting things and teaching provides the perfect outlet for this. He always considered becoming a teacher even when he was getting his engineering degree but he wanted to finish what he had started and give that career path a shot for a little bit. At Seagate, one of the opportunities that he had was to volunteer as a judge for the state science fair. He absolutely loved his time talking with and mentoring students. Eventually he realized that he could do that every single day so he made the decision to quit his job to go back to school to get his teaching license.
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