MMTP provides MPS teachers the tools for success Unlike most teachers, Kevin Schiebenes is excited that his students are experimenting with nicotine – and pesticides, caffeine, alcohol, and lead. Schiebenes is an environmental sciences teacher at Alexander Hamilton High School, where he’s in the middle of teaching a brandnew Environmental Health course. The class examines the effects of different contaminants on various fauna’s behavior, embryonic development, and learning and memory. “We started out looking at nicotine and talking about the increase of vaping and the perception that it can be safer than cigarettes,” Schiebenes said. “We used that as a jumping- off point to investigate the effects of nicotine on development and seeing how it actually affects the growing embryo of a zebrafish.” (If you’re curious, it leads to increased mortality rates in zebrafish embryos, and those that survive are often born with deformities.) “It’s the first year of this course and it’s going really well,” Schiebenes added. “The students have a lot of time to explore the topics. We focused on investigative skills. We look at background research a lot more.” The course was designed that way, with the help of the UWM’s Milwaukee Master Teacher Partnership.
Badges and microcredentials MMTP is a collaboration between UWM’s School of Education, the university’s science faculty, and the Milwaukee Public Schools system. Designed to help MPS math and science high school teachers improve various aspects of their classroom practice, the 10 • IN FOCUS • February, 2019
Mike Steele from UWM’s School of Education, one of the co-principal investigators who runs the MMTP program, works with a group of Milwaukee Public Schools teachers at an MMTP training session. UWM Photo.
project allows educators to focus on earning “badges,” or microcredentials, related various aspects of pedagogy and math and science content. They cover everything from fostering student engagement to curriculum development. “The microcredentials our team developed discuss a variety of instructional practices in the context of math and science instruction. MMTP participants then take these practices into their classroom, implementing and strategically analyzing an instructional unit they designed,” explained UWM assistant professor of chemistry Anja Blecking. She’s one of the co-principal investigators of MMTP, tasked with helping the 24 participating math and science MPS teachers achieve their badges. That involves meeting with all of the teachers periodically throughout the year to discuss new research, working with small groups of teachers who are working toward the same microcredential, and meeting one-onone to help educators implement their new strategies in the classroom. “Right now, I’m working with science teachers on a microcredential that
focuses on the implementation of inquiry-based lessons. Research supports the effectiveness of student-centered practices which, as a consequence, requires teachers to rethink their role in the classroom,” Blecking said. “We need to let students develop a sense of ownership in their learning.” That’s one of Schiebenes’ goals for the new Environmental Health class. The idea for the course grew out of another UWM program for science teachers called Wisconsin Inquirybased Science Teacher Education program. Schiebenes enjoyed working with similar course modules in WInSTEP, but wanted to give students more time to explore and experiment on their own. How fortunate, then, that he was working on his curriculum development badge and could receive guidance from UWM faculty to link the four WInSTEP modules into a new science class. Now, Alexander Hamilton High School offers three sections of the class, and Rufus King High School also offers one section.
