Giving Compass' Take:

• Alex Zimmerman shares how Seth Guiñals-Kupperman is working to engage students in science through hands-on learning. 

• How can philanthropy help hands-on instruction to reach scale in classrooms in the U.S.?

• Find out how comedic science is engaging students. 

When Seth Guiñals-Kupperman was a student at New York City’s Bronx High School of Science more than 20 years ago, he remembers not being impressed with his teachers, despite the school’s elite reputation.

His science classes were “relatively dry” experiences where teachers wrote facts on a blackboard — sometimes with a joke or anecdote about a dead white man — all for regurgitation during an exam. The teaching didn’t seem much more inspired at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where Guiñals-Kupperman studied physics, linguistics, and philosophy.

“I remember making myself a promise to show my former teachers what they could be doing to captivate their students one day”

Now a physics teacher at the Brooklyn Latin School — one of the city’s elite specialized high schools — he’s making good on that promise. Guiñals-Kupperman regularly works with other educators to improve their teaching, and he was recently recognized by Math for America, a non-profit organization devoted to elevating math and science instruction, for his influence on the profession.

Read the full article about engaging students in science by Alex Zimmerman at Chalkbeat.