Teacher at head of class for making science fun

By Linda Shaw
Seattle Times staff reporter

MIKE SIEGEL / THE SEATTLE TIMES Laura Sugden, who will be honored tomorrow as one of the state's top science teachers, explains a game project to her ninth-grade science students. At left is student Mohamed Shek.

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If Laura Sugden had a proverbial nickel for every time one of her students said science is too hard/just for nerds/not for me, the money would definitely supplement her salary as a third-year teacher at West Seattle High.

There's a mystique around science, she says, that she's determined to burst. For her energy, her skill and her willingness to collaborate with fellow teachers, she will be honored tomorrow as one of Washington state's top science teachers at a National Science Teachers Association Convention.

She'll also share her ideas at the conference, which opened yesterday in Seattle and has drawn about 3,000 educators and scientists. She strongly believes it is important to spark students' interest by making science fun and to break concepts down so youngsters don't get intimidated.

That's what she did earlier this week, when a ninth-grade class was at first slow to remember what it had learned about chemistry in the past five weeks.

Sugden didn't give in and tell the students; she just kept probing. Did they know what she meant by concept? The answers finally started rolling: they'd learned about atoms and homogeneous mixtures, and the difference between physical and chemical changes. They had studied electromagnetic spectra, and more.

A few minutes later, the classroom buzzed as students designed games that had to incorporate eight of what was by then a long list of concepts on the classroom white board. And they were eager to recall the hardest ones that they could use to stump fellow students.

The exercise is one that students enjoy the most each year, Sugden says. It also reinforces what she's taught. And it gives students who don't do well on tests another way to show what they've learned.

"Before they know it, they've learned a whole lot," she says.

It also represents the kind of teaching that earned her recognition as Beginning Science Teacher of the Year this year. Mary McClellan, president of the Washington Science Teachers Association, in her letter recommending Sugden for the award, mentioned a similar exercise the teacher did, in which students had to convince their parents they knew enough physics to be able to drive a car.

Sugden is in her third year of teaching at a time science is in the spotlight more than before. This year, science became a required subject on the Washington Assessment of Student Learning. Soon, it will become part of the testing requirements of the federal No Child Left Behind Act.

With increased attention, there's renewed debate about the best way to teach science, with some advocating more science "discovery" through projects, and others more traditional reading-and-lecture instruction.

Sugden is a strong believer in the hands-on projects, one of the hallmarks of the Seattle School District's internationally known science curriculum. But that doesn't mean she doesn't lecture. Her class, she says, is a mix of a number of methods.

"It's like your diet," she says. "You can't just eat one thing and stay healthy."

Teaching is Sugden's second career. She majored in biochemistry in college and started her work life as a technician in a University of Washington laboratory studying the proteins found in the brains of Alzheimer's patients.

But she found that research wasn't the way she wanted to pursue her strong interest in science, which started at age 4 when she asked Santa for a microscope. But teaching was.

She wants more people to understand that science isn't for the elite few. "I just love it. I've always loved it," Sugden says. And if students were exposed to it in the right ways, she adds, "they would love it, too."

Linda Shaw: 206-464-2359 or lshaw@seattletimes.com

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company

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