{"id":7039,"date":"2022-09-22T10:26:01","date_gmt":"2022-09-22T14:26:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/umaine.edu\/epscor\/?p=7039"},"modified":"2023-03-28T16:29:00","modified_gmt":"2023-03-28T20:29:00","slug":"7039","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/umaine.edu\/epscor\/2022\/09\/22\/7039\/","title":{"rendered":"INSPIRES High School Teacher Spotlight: Amy Sidell"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Stefania Irene Marthakis\u00a0<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

This fall, Amy Sidell began her 7<\/span>th<\/span> year as a biology teacher at Hampden Academy in Maine\u2014specifically four levels of Biology: remedial, college prep, honors, and AP. Sidell has also been the advisor for Envirothon for the past 11 years. Envirothon is a national high school competition that focuses on solving natural resources problems through a hands-on approach to topics such as aquatics, forestry, soils, and wildlife.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Selfie<\/a>
Amy Sidell<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

What began as volunteering at Hampden Academy\u2014her children\u2019s current school\u2014soon led to two years of subbing then a new focus: teaching. Formerly an Environmental Engineer, Sidell changed course: \u201cTeaching allows me to give back a little more, and hopefully have a more positive impact on the community\u2014and the greater good.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

With a background in forest soils along with her experience with the Envirothon program, Sidell was excited to join the NSF EPSCoR RII Track-2 grant INSPIRES\u2014which focuses on gathering, analyzing, and utilizing data collected from across the Northern Forest Region. Through a partnership with the Maine Center for Research in STEM Education (RiSE Center), an interdisciplinary research center at the University of Maine, INSPIRES has created a teacher training program involving middle and high school teachers from across Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

From Summer Institutes including fieldwork to monthly working groups, INSPIRES and RiSE have provided a rare opportunity\u2014especially in a science-based research project\u2014for the teachers to act as researchers: develop and test their own hypothesis as well as collect data from sensors alongside INSPIRES project members of different disciplines. In turn, the teachers will incorporate elements of their training into their respective classrooms.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI want students to understand that they are all scientists, they can think like scientists, and they can be critical about the claims that they\u2019re hearing, and look for the data that supports that, to ask questions about it, to not think that science is some scary thing that only scientists do in labs, that it\u2019s something that applies to your everyday life,\u201d Sidell stated.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Photo<\/a>
Teachers at INSPIRES Workshop<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Last year, Sidell and her group focused on developing lessons, specifically stand-alone modules that can be useful for a wide range of classes from forestry-specific research classes to Ecology of Maine, as well as Introduction to Biology. These statistics tutorials can also be used with data that is part of the Forest Ecology Research Network\u2014a field-based, exploratory program for students across Maine.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

This school year, Sidell plans to implement some of the modules in her AP Biology class (e.g., calculating summary statistics, creating bar graphs with error bars using Google Sheets). The students will be introduced to the concepts of working with forestry data, and then they can apply those techniques to non-forestry-related data as well.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Through INSPIRES and RiSE, Sidell hopes to advance a long-term goal of hers: a stand-alone Natural Resource class. To begin, Sidell plans to incorporate innovative ideas and natural resource topics into her biology class.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI believe it\u2019s important for our kids to understand the environment that they live in,\u201d Sidell said. \u201cWe\u2019re surrounded by forests, and they\u2019re the ones that are going to be taking care of it. The more they can understand what\u2019s going on and appreciate it\u2014and be aware, the better off we all are.\u201d\\<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Stefania Irene Marthakis\u00a0 This fall, Amy Sidell began her 7th year as a biology teacher at Hampden Academy in Maine\u2014specifically four levels of Biology: remedial, college prep, honors, and AP. Sidell has also been the advisor for Envirothon for the past 11 years. Envirothon is a national high school competition that focuses on solving […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1966,"featured_media":7042,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"3","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_kad_blocks_custom_css":"","_kad_blocks_head_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_body_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_footer_custom_js":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","spc_primary_category":0},"categories":[1,3],"tags":[267,268,264,257,68,256],"class_list":["post-7039","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","category-news","tag-environmental-research","tag-forestry-research","tag-inspires","tag-k-12-education","tag-stem-education","tag-teaching"],"taxonomy_info":{"category":[{"value":1,"label":"General"},{"value":3,"label":"News"}],"post_tag":[{"value":267,"label":"environmental research"},{"value":268,"label":"forestry research"},{"value":264,"label":"INSPIRES"},{"value":257,"label":"K-12 education"},{"value":68,"label":"STEM Education"},{"value":256,"label":"teaching"}]},"featured_image_src_large":["https:\/\/umaine.edu\/epscor\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/25\/2022\/09\/hs-inspires-cover-1024x576.png",1024,576,true],"author_info":{"display_name":"dtimmermann","author_link":"https:\/\/umaine.edu\/epscor\/author\/dtimmermann\/"},"comment_info":0,"category_info":[{"term_id":1,"name":"General","slug":"general","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":1,"taxonomy":"category","description":"","parent":0,"count":57,"filter":"raw","cat_ID":1,"category_count":57,"category_description":"","cat_name":"General","category_nicename":"general","category_parent":0},{"term_id":3,"name":"News","slug":"news","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":3,"taxonomy":"category","description":"Stay up-to-date on Maine EPSCoR funded research and activities!\r\n\r\nSubscribe to our e-news and updates.\u00a0<\/a>","parent":0,"count":247,"filter":"raw","cat_ID":3,"category_count":247,"category_description":"Stay up-to-date on Maine EPSCoR funded research and activities!\r\n\r\nSubscribe to our e-news and updates.\u00a0<\/a>","cat_name":"News","category_nicename":"news","category_parent":0}],"tag_info":[{"term_id":267,"name":"environmental research","slug":"environmental-research","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":267,"taxonomy":"post_tag","description":"","parent":0,"count":2,"filter":"raw"},{"term_id":268,"name":"forestry research","slug":"forestry-research","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":268,"taxonomy":"post_tag","description":"","parent":0,"count":1,"filter":"raw"},{"term_id":264,"name":"INSPIRES","slug":"inspires","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":264,"taxonomy":"post_tag","description":"","parent":0,"count":2,"filter":"raw"},{"term_id":257,"name":"K-12 education","slug":"k-12-education","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":257,"taxonomy":"post_tag","description":"","parent":0,"count":2,"filter":"raw"},{"term_id":68,"name":"STEM Education","slug":"stem-education","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":68,"taxonomy":"post_tag","description":"","parent":0,"count":23,"filter":"raw"},{"term_id":256,"name":"teaching","slug":"teaching","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":256,"taxonomy":"post_tag","description":"","parent":0,"count":2,"filter":"raw"}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/umaine.edu\/epscor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7039","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/umaine.edu\/epscor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/umaine.edu\/epscor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/umaine.edu\/epscor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1966"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/umaine.edu\/epscor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7039"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/umaine.edu\/epscor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7039\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7317,"href":"https:\/\/umaine.edu\/epscor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7039\/revisions\/7317"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/umaine.edu\/epscor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7042"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/umaine.edu\/epscor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7039"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/umaine.edu\/epscor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7039"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/umaine.edu\/epscor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7039"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}