How did you connect with Beyond Benign?

My students have responded positively to the green chemistry curriculum I have used in my classes. I also knew Jane Wissenger and Cassandra Knutson that are connected with Beyond Benign program, both are high achieving women that raved about it.

 

What first drew you into teaching and science education?

I became a teacher to provide students from all walks of life an equitable learning environment that is founded on relationship building, evidence-based argumentation, and real-world phenomena. Chemistry is such an integral framework for understanding how the world around them works and I always hope by the end of the year, my students don’t just question how something is, but critically think about why it is through the process of evidence based reasoning.

 

What excites you most about teaching green chemistry?

I love the exciting challenge green chemistry offers. It takes a set of 12 principles that most can agree are fairly common sense in nature. Yet in implementation, they challenge a scientist to be not only be inventive in their practice, but to also consider economic and environmental outcomes in their developmental process. When applied to a classroom, it gives students a different and often new framework, that encourages them to thinking more proactively on how to resolve major issue like plastic waste from the source.