Winners CA 2006

Edwin F. Bell
Costa Mesa High School/Middle School
Costa Mesa, California

“There is no greater thrill than having a student tell me ‘I didn’t like science before your class. Now it is my favorite class,’” says Edwin Bell, who in only four years of teaching has racked up many achievements, including developing a middle school honors science program and winning the Newport-Mesa Unified School District’s Buster Creely Excellence in Teaching Award in 2004. Bell brings science to life for his wide range of seventh and eighth graders, including visually impaired, gifted and talented and special education students, by using M&M’s to model the structure of an atom and 250-foot water balloon launchers to explore the principles of motion. “The most exciting part is when I sit in a beach chair at mid-field and challenge students to hit me with water balloons,” says Bell, who every year also offers his students math and science field trips to Hawaii and Six Flags Magic Mountain.

 
 

Anne Marie Bergen
Oakdale Joint Unified School District
Oakdale, California

“Seeing the possibility rather than the impossibility has allowed me to extend the walls of my classroom, connecting students to the real world,” says Anne Marie Bergen, who, as a district science teacher for grades K-6, brings science to life for the kids and staff of three elementary schools. Bergen was inspired to teach science during an internship at Fort Hill Horizons Outdoor Schools, where she began to develop her teaching philosophy of “active learning, compassionate teaching, and meaningful experiences.” Her students engage as learners through science fair workshops, “Dinner With a Scientist” events, and other hands-on activities. Recently Bergen collaborated with a special education class to create and maintain a brine shrimp colony. Her imaginative teaching methods and commitment to her students won Bergen a 2003 California Teacher of the Year distinction.
 
 

Brendan Casey
Joan MacQueen Middle School
Alpine, California

Of the many awards he has won during fourteen years of teaching—Teacher of the Year, a fellowship at Johns Hopkins University—Brendan Casey’s most cherished is “Weirdo Teacher of the Years,” given by his peers at Joan MacQueen Middle School. The plural “years” is not a typo, but a testament to the creativity and dynamism Casey brings to his classroom. “It’s about creating a strong impression,” explains Casey of his teaching methods. For example, during his notorious “Wagon of Doom” lesson, he dons a wrestling mask and rides down a steep ramp to demonstrate the force of motion. He is one of the nation’s top presenters for AVID (Achievement Via Individual Determination), a program that teaches teachers in-classroom strategies; he presents workshops to over two hundred and fifty teachers per year.
 
 

Kim Castagna
Canalino School
Carpinteria, California

“I believe in the motto ‘students learn best by doing,’” says Kim Castagna, describing her sixth grade class as “a busy hub of activity.” Castagna helped design and implement Canalino’s sixth- and seventh-grade science curriculum. She uses ice cream to simulate moving glaciers. Stuffed birds of prey hang from the ceiling of her classroom. Her students attend missile launches and go on guided tours of the Pasadena Jet Propulsion Lab. Her infectious love of science sparks similar passion in her students, who every year attend a three-day outdoor science camp near San Luis Obispo.
 
 

Tucker Hiatt
The Branson School
Ross, California

Tucker Hiatt was inspired to start an annual event called “Wonderfest, the Bay Area Festival of Science,” by his hero Carl Sagan’s statement that “science is successful if, at first, it does no more than inspire a sense of wonder.” Every year since 1997, researchers, students and the general public have packed venues at Stanford and UC Berkeley to attend Wonderfest dialogues such as “Will We Ever Set Foot On Mars?” and “How Does Thinking Depend On Language?” Another Wonderfest highlight is the WonderCup Challenge, a high school science competition in which the winning team goes on to compete against a team of university researchers (in 2005 the researchers had a close win of 22-20). Hiatt’s juniors and seniors at the Branson School perform exciting physics labs, such as testing to see if they can affect the decay rate of atomic nuclei with their minds (to date, the answer is “no”). Described by his principal as the “Pied Piper of Physics,” Hiatt has been an inspiration to scores of students throughout his twenty-seven year career.