In a world where innovative thinking and technological skills are increasingly important, the Governor’s STEM Advisory Council at the Iowa Department of Education knows the importance of honoring the dedicated STEM teachers fostering thriving learning environments that allow students to develop these skills.
The Iowa STEM Teacher Award, sponsored by Google, is presented annually to one full-time, licensed PK-12 classroom teacher in each of the six STEM regions in Iowa. The award honors teachers making a difference in the lives of students across the state by providing excellent curriculum, encouraging lifelong learning and inspiring a passion for STEM beyond the classroom and into the future.
This year’s six regional Iowa STEM Teacher Award recipients were honored in a ceremony during STEM Day at the Capitol on March 3. We asked each awardee to share a bit of their story, telling us about their time as a STEM Teacher, how they came to the profession, what inspires them and what continues to excite them about teaching STEM.
Today, we are highlighting Dan Kuchera, science teacher at Clarksville High School in the Northeast Iowa STEM region.
What is the most rewarding part of being a STEM teacher?
The most rewarding part of being a STEM teacher is the uniqueness that it brings to each day. Activity, field trip, speaker or demonstration (even one that has been shared for years), each becomes new as the equipment, settings and interactions of people change.
How did you become interested in teaching?
I became interested in teaching in middle school because the school I was at (Bettendorf Middle School) had a mentor program. Being second-born in a family of seven children, mentoring grade school students while in middle school was soothingly similar to life at home.
What made you want to become a science teacher?
I went to college to be an aerospace engineer and hoped to build rockets. College was expensive, and to make money, I tutored as part of the Student Services program at Iowa State University. My mother and grandmother had both been teachers, and mentoring at home, in middle school programs, and in college seemed easy, fun and rewarding. A decade later, I had a student who went on to become a brigadier general in the U.S. Space Force. Two decades later, my background experiences and the Governor’s Externship program have me working to help build the transporters for the Space Launch System. It’s odd how things work out as they do.
Tell me about a teacher who inspired you.
At Bettendorf High School, I was lucky enough to be taught physics by Don Schaefer. Oblivious to who he was when I was a student, I eagerly enjoyed the daily PSSC labs and demonstrations which were like kindergarten play stations to me (with the added benefit of being somewhat more dangerous)!
How do physics and chemistry align with regional workforce needs?
Regional workforce needs have changed greatly for me over the years. In early years of teaching, physics and chemistry were college prep classes (and largely still are today). Focus has switched to STEM teaching where physics and chemistry content is blended with introductory experiences in mathematics and application of content to work experience. The result of this has moved student instruction beyond, “how you do this” to include, “where and when you need this as well as why.”
Why do you find it important to include community partners in your lessons?
Including community partners enhances instruction by making rigorous content more relevant and showing that it has a specific useful purpose to the community. This helps students see themselves in jobs and at sites where they could soon be working.
How is science different from how our parents or grandparents may have been taught?
My parents didn’t have microwave ovens, personal computers, drones or GPS. The houses had cloth insulation around the wiring and cooling fans didn’t have cages around them. There are countless other examples, but I draw incredible strength from what my parents and grandparents were able to accomplish with what they had. Today, my students can gather data wirelessly, process it on a computer and share that information with classmates, even when they are on holiday with their parents who are out of the country. They can access resources via the internet and within the decade may be colonizing Mars much as pilgrims migrated to new worlds some 400 years ago. The challenge is not to teach in a new way, but to find paths of instruction that incorporate old with new. The old has relevance, both for its successes as well as for its failures, and it gives context to the technologies that students deal with today.
If you are part of a STEM BEST Program, have been a Iowa STEM Teacher Extern, or have incorporated the STEM Scale-Up Program into your lessons during your teacher career, tell us about how the STEM Council’s programs have helped you and your students.
Thanks to University of Northern Iowa’s information and guidance, I was fortunate to be part of the Governor’s Iowa STEM Teacher Externship program. The experience helped me to understand what an important role high school education plays in preparing students for a future that beckons them. So few of us know in our teens what will be the career that will feed us physically, emotionally and spiritually or even recognize the significance of the people and institutions that would help us to get there. I am tremendously grateful to the STEM Teacher Externship program for helping me to realize both before my teaching days were over and for making it possible to help share that realization with others.