Jen

Jen is a master educator with 31 years of experience in teaching physics, biology, physical science, and chemistry. She is currently working at a large suburban public high school in northern Illinois, teaching College Prep Physics and AP C Mechanics, and plans to finish her career in education there. For the past decade, Jen has been focused on improving her physics curriculum, starting with a switch to modeling curriculum. Her ideal classroom is one where the students are working at understanding data to find a model or applying a model to an activity or lab practicum while they work in groups on a whiteboard. When she isn't teaching, she is playing with her rescue dogs, cooking, biking, working her direct sales business, or volunteering for Rockford Sexual Assault Counseling.

"I figured out a long time ago that in order to be a better teacher, I needed to stop focusing only on what I was doing in the front of the classroom. I needed the students to engage with the material- make mistakes and figure out what was actually going on. This completely changed how I approach curriculum development. My best teaching days are when I am facilitating student learning by letting them go figure things out together, while I encourage, correct, and guide them along their journey."