Ask Me Anything! Coworkers, Motivation, Biblical Integration, and More! [Episode 250]

Rebecca Joyner [00:00:01]:
Welcome to the 250th episode of the Secondary Science Simplified podcast. I honestly cannot believe we are here. If you had told me back in January 2022 that I would still be doing this podcast 5 years later, I don’t know if I would’ve believed you, but it’s very exciting and honestly, it’s one of my favorite parts of this job, so I’m super happy to do it. And today we are gonna celebrate 250 episodes as we celebrate Every 50-episode milestone that this podcast keeps going with a little ask me anything themed episode. So today I am answering 10 of the questions that you all submitted either via email or they’re questions that I got in January at my beginning of the year survey for the podcast, which I plan all of my yearly episodes from. A lot of the repeated questions I make into full episodes that like stand alone by themselves, but for a couple of like the smaller questions that I saw kind of more sporadically, I saved them for this episode. So we’re going to cover like a wide variety of topics in this episode. Things you can look forward to are coworker relationships, organization, having to teach with a scripted curriculum, if you’re interested in writing your own curriculum, how to reach every student, motivating senior AP students, faith in the science classroom, and so much more.

Rebecca Joyner [00:01:24]:
So let’s dive in. This is Secondary Science Simplified, a podcast for secondary science teachers who want to engage their students And simplify their lives. I’m Rebecca Joyner from It’s Not Rocket Science. As a high school science teacher turned curriculum writer, I am passionate about helping other science teachers love their jobs, serve their students, and do it all in only 40 hours a week. Are you ready to rock the time you spend in your classroom and actually have a life outside of it? You are in the right place, teacher friend. Let’s get to today’s episode. So for some of these questions, I’m going to reference previous episodes that I’ve done, or, you know, free resources I have out there that answer the question. And so I’m going to link all of these things because there are so many in the show notes.

Rebecca Joyner [00:02:15]:
So if at any point you’re like, what was that episode she referenced? What was that number? What was that resource? Or I actually am going to be referencing also a lot of different playlists I have. So Spotify is the way I curate playlists. Basically, there’ll be a specific topic. I’ll put all the episodes I have on that topic on a Spotify playlist because it’s free to do that and for y’all to access. So I’m linking a bunch of those as well. All of that will be in the show notes, which can be found at itsnotrocketscienceclassroom.com/episode250. So let’s dive in. Question number 1 is from a teacher who addressed themself as a new teacher friend, and they wrote, Dear Rebecca, I’m teaching this school year for the very first time.

Rebecca Joyner [00:02:55]:
I’m a brand new teacher, high school biology, and I’ve reached out to the other teachers in my department of science in hopes of gaining more knowledge, support, and genuinely trying to get to know my fellow teachers. I’ve had little to no responses from them, or they say they’ll send me something to go by and never send it. I’m wondering if they’re just in summer vacay mode or if this will be a recurring theme with them. I’m so excited to teach and would love to build up morale within our department. On the other hand, it seems like they don’t share these common goals. Any insight would be greatly appreciated. Sincerely, a new teacher friend. So the first thing I will say is I would assume the best, that this is an issue of it just being summer and people being unplugged.

Rebecca Joyner [00:03:35]:
I received this question in the middle of July, so I think it’s one of those things that if you’re working with a bunch of other veteran biology teachers, they kind of have their systems, they’re, they’re treating their summer as summer, and they have Boundaries up, which, you know, it’s hard to fault them for that. What I would say though is to keep pursuing, especially your department chair, or typically when you’re a new teacher, you get assigned kind of like a mentor teacher to help you through. So if you don’t have that, you could ask your admin or your department chair if there’s someone who would be willing to kind of do that, to be your point person in that regard. And I would keep pursuing them for help, especially with things— it sounds like you’re looking for like a pacing guide. Like, are there any shared resources we’re doing? Any shared expectations? Are we co-planning? Like, Those are all extremely valid questions. So I would keep pursuing to build those relationships. I would also say too, like, it’s unlikely that you are going to connect with everyone in your department, and I’m sure you know that. But I would say even if you can just find one person who’s like-minded and teaches like you or has similar teaching values, I really think that makes all of the difference.

Rebecca Joyner [00:04:37]:
Like, I can think of my friend Jamie, who I taught with in my biology department. She was my closest friend. I mean, she was 10 or 15 years older than me. I can’t even remember, it’s been so long now. We’ve been friends for so long. She was very much in a different life stage than me, but we just were in sync in terms of our teaching philosophies, and that just made such a difference, even though there were a lot of other people I didn’t necessarily get along with super well. Another tip I will give you is to branch out of your department if needed. Like, obviously your science department is who you’re gonna have to go to for like pacing guide questions or you know, standards, expectations, that kind of thing.

Rebecca Joyner [00:05:12]:
But even just having friends in different departments makes a really big difference too in terms of your personal enjoyment of being at your job or the fun that you have when you’re sitting at faculty meetings or anything like that. So I had some different friends that taught different subjects. One of my best friends ended up being a new school counselor at the school who— and she started the same year that I did. So, and we’re still best friends. We still talk every single day. So I highly recommend considering branching out. And the last thing I’ll recommend is this: episode 71 is about working with difficult coworkers. I think that might encourage you, so I would check out that episode.

Rebecca Joyner [00:05:49]:
Maybe it’ll help you as the school year goes on. All right, question number 2 comes from John. He writes, hi Rebecca, since I was in college, I’ve listened to your podcast. It’s been wonderful. Yay! I’m now going into my 5th year at the same school and I’m still teaching middle school science. I have a few questions as I get ready for the year. Do you have any tips for transitioning from 50-minute classes to 90-minute block classes? I have a study hall on my schedule. Do you have any suggestions for making the best use of that time? I’m also organizing my science closet.

Rebecca Joyner [00:06:17]:
Do you recommend organizing it by topic, or is there another system that has worked well for you? What categories have you found most helpful? First, I love that you’re switching from 50 to 90 minutes. I am obsessed. I would— my preferred schedule is a block schedule. That does feel really long though to keep a middle school student engaged, so my best recommendation is to constantly change up what you were doing and never, ever, ever lecture for more than 15 minutes at a time. I have a little anatomy of a class period, like cheat sheet. It’s kind of like a one-pager, but one side is for like a 50-minute class period and one side is for a block or 90-minute class period. So you can kind of see how I would break up the class period traditionally into chunks with that cheat sheet. So that is at itsnotrocketscienceclassroom.com/cheatsheet.

Rebecca Joyner [00:07:05]:
That’s a little freebie. And of course, that’s not like a rigid formula that you need to keep every single day, but that is just like a general kind of pattern that I kind of hold. I also have an episode 149 all about teaching on a block schedule. It’s my favorite schedule, like I mentioned, so I would check out that episode, which I’ll also link in the show notes. The next thing I would recommend for anyone who’s changing schedules, whether that’s like 50 to 90 minutes or your school’s doing something totally funky and you’re doing like a college schedule where you have like Tuesday, Thursday classes or Monday, Wednesday, Friday, like Just something really different is the first year, just give yourself so much grace and treat it as like a data collection year. Like you just are going to be figuring out what you can do and how much you can get through each day. And take notes. Like this can be so simple.

Rebecca Joyner [00:07:52]:
It can be like a Google Doc or it can be in a handwritten planner, whatever you want to do. But take notes every day of what you were able to get through and the amount of time you had. And take notes if like it was a day where there was a pep rally or there was a weird assembly schedule. So you only saw students for 27 minutes that day. Like. Take notes like, on this day, this is what I got through. And that’s going to serve you every year after this, having just something to reference. And it’ll help you also just to plan better in the future.

Rebecca Joyner [00:08:21]:
Now for the study hall question, I wish I had asked you more follow-up questions before recording this episode, but I’m assuming you’re just supervising the study hall. I would personally then treat this as an extra planning period, which is awesome for you, but also just as an opportunity to bond with kids. Like, You could start off each of these study halls just doing like a news of interest after you take attendance, seeing if they have anything interesting they want to share, then kind of sending them to work on their things as needed. I can’t imagine a study hall for 90 minutes for a middle schooler and then being able to keep their attention, but that seems to be your school’s choice. So I guess, you know, that’s not necessarily your problem to figure out other than just keeping them under control. And then maybe ending the class period with a tell me something good where everyone can kind of go around and share something positive. Or something that they did or accomplished during the study hall, I think could be a productive way to kind of bond with students during that time. And then to keep students on task who are not working on anything they should be working on, I would treat them as unofficial TAs, like teacher’s aides.

Rebecca Joyner [00:09:17]:
And I would say like, hey, if you aren’t going to keep yourself busy with work for other classes, you’re going to be working for me, whether that’s having them staple things, helping you clean beakers, helping you, you know, File things away, just any sort of hands-on task they could do. That’s how I would be utilizing those students so that they are keeping themselves busy. It could even be scraping gum off the bottom of your lab desks, you know, maybe something they don’t necessarily wanna do. So then they’ll make sure they come prepared with something to do during your study hall. Those are my study hall recommendations. And then lastly, to answer John’s question about organization, I think this is all personal preference in terms of how you like to keep things. I personally like to keep like supplies together. So like a shelf of all matching glassware, you know, a corner of one shelf that’s all the hot plates, all the digital scales, especially if your closet is kind of the drop zone for a lot of people in your department to share equipment from.

Rebecca Joyner [00:10:09]:
And then if you have specific supplies for individual labs, or like if you use It’s Not Rocket Science curricula, like I have a lot of lab stations that I recommend you print once and laminate, or task cards you print once and laminate, or maybe some labs have You know, labels for different places where you’re going to do measuring versus whatever that you would print once, laminate, and reuse. You know, all of those things I recommend getting. I get them these like shoebox plastic containers. They’re clear. I’ll link an example on Amazon. You can get them at Walmart. Sometimes the dollar store has them, Target. Typically you can get like 12 for like $28, but I love these because they’re stackable and they’re really nice small size.

Rebecca Joyner [00:10:50]:
And anything that’s like a specialty supply for a specific lab, I put in that and then I label on the front what lab it’s for. So that way for that lab, I can just go grab that bin. So like for example, in my biology curriculum, in our ecology unit, we have this lab that’s called Stop the Spread and we use these really, really tiny test tubes. No one else in my department uses them for any other lab except for me. So I personally kept them in that with the teeny tiny pipettes that I use. So that every year I know exactly where they are. You know, maybe there’s a different lab, like my photosynthesis relay in my biology energy flow unit, where there’s some different cutouts and things like that. I put those in the little shoebox lid, but then if I need like a beaker or something for that lab, I’m not putting a beaker in that lid.

Rebecca Joyner [00:11:36]:
It’s just like the really specific lab things, and then I stack those up as well. And like one shelf is biology things, one’s physical science, one’s anatomy, that kind of thing. That’s how I would personally do it. Okay, question number 3 comes from Sand to Snow. She writes, Dear Rebecca, at the high school IT chat, I have approximately 130 students a week. I’m a firm believer in establishing relationships in order to prevent behavior issues, but there always seems to be a few students I simply can’t reach. Oh, don’t get me wrong, I try everything I know— contacting the parents, asking the student how I can make things better for them, etc. When it is all said and done, I almost feel defeated because I didn’t reach 100% of my students.

Rebecca Joyner [00:12:16]:
People told me when I started teaching 27 years ago that eventually you would learn not to care as much, but that isn’t the case here. How do you handle situations like this if you have them? I appreciate any input you have. I first want to say that I love that you care, and I love that you haven’t become jaded and just like stopped caring about students. I think you’re doing all of the right things. But I also want to encourage you that there’s just no way we can possibly connect personally with every student. They’re all so diverse. And I think those are the situations where we have to trust that even if you don’t have a personal connection and relationship with each student, hopefully they’re finding that with another teacher that maybe they are naturally just more aligned with or just naturally vibe with better. I don’t know really a better word to say that.

Rebecca Joyner [00:13:02]:
Now, I do think though, a way that you can maybe improve your connections with these students, even if you don’t really get that personal connection with them that I know you’re desiring, is to do something that I like to call microdose connection. Okay, microdosing connection. So you’re just trying to connect with them in really tiny ways, and one way you can do that is with popsicle sticks. Episode 246 is exactly how to implement these, but essentially I use popsicle sticks where I draw names and I draw— try to get through every name in a class period twice. So even if it’s just 2 little touchpoints with every student in one class period, that’s 2 touchpoints. And you know, you’re building on that every time you see them. Also, I do a student questionnaire at the beginning of the year. It’s really simple, but I just ask them like different things about them, what, how they spend their time outside of school.

Rebecca Joyner [00:13:48]:
You learn a lot, like which students have jobs, which are watching their little siblings, which are playing which sports, or, you know, in the band or whatever. And then on my very first seating chart I make, Which is always the students’ names in alphabetical order. I always write the name that they prefer to go by on that seating chart, because the first day I go around and I connect with each student and ask them like, hey, what do you, you know, your name’s Thomas. Do you go by Tom, Tommy, T, like Thomas? What do you go by? So I write that down. And then when I go through the questionnaires, I read all of them. But then on that first seating chart, I just write down like one thing to remember about the student that they’re involved in. So maybe it’s that they work at McDonald’s. Maybe it’s that they’re in the orchestra.

Rebecca Joyner [00:14:27]:
Maybe it’s that they play lacrosse. I don’t know what it might be. But I just write that down. So then as I’m learning their names, I’m learning one thing about them. And ideally, I like to try to support students in their extracurriculars. If that’s going to, you know, a football game or a basketball game, if it’s trying to sit through one of the band concerts, if you’re able to have time to do that. If they work at McDonald’s, especially the students that have jobs, I do really try to be like, okay, I’m meal planning this week. My family’s going to McDonald’s for dinner one week because I know so-and-so works there and they work this shift.

Rebecca Joyner [00:14:58]:
Obviously for 130 students, it’s not realistic to have those touchpoints with every single student, but I think you can highlight the students that you’re having a harder time connecting with and trying to prioritize those students. Or maybe it’s a student that, like I said, you know, their after-school job is they’re watching their siblings because their parents work third shift or whatever it may be. You can’t really do much to help them there, but you can remember that they do that and say, check in, like learn their siblings’ names, ask how they’re doing, that kind of thing. I think those are ways that like, instead of focusing on all 130 students, another way we can kind of make the problem smaller is focus on the 20 to 30 you have at that time in your class period, and then really narrow down on like the 5 each class period that you’re having the hardest time connecting with and be really intentional with those specific students. I’m always trying to do just like the next right thing by loving the person who’s right in front of me as best as I can in that moment. As opposed to maybe strategizing and thinking about the bigger problem of all 130. So, Sand to Snow, I hope that helps. Question number 4 comes from Lisa.

Rebecca Joyner [00:16:01]:
She says, thank you for your amazing content. This year was my first year teaching bio and AP Bio, and my students overall did well on the exam. My seniors unfortunately checked out and didn’t do well. I’m looking for ways to motivate these students to get my average overall up. I love AP Bio Penguins. If y’all don’t know her, she was on the podcast. She was an excellent guest episode. And Lisa says she purchased my biology curriculum for 9th— her 9th graders.

Rebecca Joyner [00:16:27]:
She says, I’m trying to load content on the freshmen so that the vocab in AP has been heard before. Best wishes, Lisa. Okay, the first thing I’ll say is that the Honors It’s Not Rocket Science biology curriculum will give them a great introductory foundation to biology for when they go on to take AP Bio. I used that with my students who I eventually had for AP Biology when I taught that course. Now here’s the problem. The problem is there is a large amount of time between 9th grade Biology 1 and AP Bio, especially for your 12th graders. So I want you to be realistic with your expectations here. When I taught AP Bio, I had very few seniors.

Rebecca Joyner [00:17:05]:
I mainly had juniors, and the juniors, it was all so much more fresh. For the seniors, it was like almost completely starting over. So I just want you to have that expectation that it doesn’t matter, I don’t think, how much vocabulary you front load with those freshmen. Like, come senior year, it might be something they are like, huh, I kind of remember that word, but they may not remember at all. So I think low— not lowering the bar, but lowering your expectation for what you hope for them to remember would be helpful here. But also trusting that I think the most important thing is not necessarily vocab freshman year in Biology 1, but it’s those skills. It’s making sure you really drill them on. You know, Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium, so that when you bring it up the next time, it’s not totally fresh.

Rebecca Joyner [00:17:48]:
It’s really drilling them on the big picture for photosynthesis and respiration, like making sure they understand inputs and outputs of the different steps and where everything’s happening and why. And if they can remember those big picture things, then when you get to AP Bio and you’re getting a lot more granular on some of the content, then they understand the why and they have so much more context for when you’re getting into those details. So that’s what I would Prioritize more personally than necessarily vocab. Another thing I wanna tell you, Lisa, is I absolutely understand wanting to get your average up, but I will also say you cannot force seniors to care. Like, you just simply cannot. And so I think a few things you can do here. One is encourage your students when you know they’re becoming juniors, your former Biology 1 students, when they’re sophomore year making their plans for junior, encourage them to take AP Bio as a junior. They’re just simply gonna care more then, and it’s gonna be more fresh for them then.

Rebecca Joyner [00:18:46]:
You can also talk to your school counselors and encourage them to have students take it as a junior as opposed to a senior, so there’s less of a gap there. I would also say a good motivator for seniors is emphasizing how much class time they get to skip, how many credits they get to skip in college if they can pass this exam, especially if they can get a, you know, a 4 or 5. Obviously, The rules of transferring credits are different in every state and every university has different rules here. But in most states, like if you can get a 5 on the AP Bio exam, you can get out of Bio 101 and Bio 102, which are 4-credit courses with a 3-credit lecture and a 1-credit lab. So that’s 8 college credits, especially if your students are paying their way through college. Like that is huge savings there. And then many schools, if they can get a 3 or 4, they can at least get out of Bio 101 and just jump straight into Bio 102. Even if they’re not going on to take science, traditionally you have some sort of science credit as a gen ed, but if they are taking any sort of science course, usually they have to at least take like 101 and 102 of biology and chemistry and like of these basic classes before they start specializing.

Rebecca Joyner [00:19:52]:
So that can be a huge motivator for seniors. Like you’re gonna have more time in your college schedule to take other classes by taking this one seriously here. Another thing I’d say too is like if they’re paying to take the test, they might as well do their best on it. So encouraging them in that way, I think, might be a motivator. But again, I would not be wasting a lot of energy trying to motivate seniors to care. There are a lot of other hills I will die on, and that is just one that, like, seniors are gonna be seniors and they’re gonna have senioritis. And some of that senioritis kicks in in March, some it kicks in in January, some it’s there the very first day of senior year. So that’s just an uphill battle I wouldn’t be trying to fight.

Rebecca Joyner [00:20:31]:
The last thing I’ll say to hopefully encourage you is I have a great Spotify playlist where I’ve curated every guest interview I’ve done with any teacher that teaches AP Science, and they are all excellent. Like, you don’t need to just listen to the AP Bio ones. Like, you can learn so much from the AP Chem and the AP Environmental teachers because so many of the tips that they share transfer despite the content. So highly recommend that playlist. You can find it at itsnotrocketscienceclassroom.com/apscience. Or just go to the show notes and you’ll be able to find it there too. Question number 5 comes from Carly. She says, how do you manage full-time teaching and getting your master’s degree at the same time? I will say this, everything is a season.

Rebecca Joyner [00:21:10]:
I did my master’s at night and in the summers during my first 2 years teaching, which was great because I was coming fresh from college, so I was still kind of in school mode. It was also great because I didn’t have any children at the time. But obviously, you know, if you’re doing this in a later season where you have a full family and all these other things, like it’s gonna be a lot harder. So I just wanna encourage you that it is a season and you’re gonna have to make accommodations for this unique season that you’re in. In this specific season of working on your master’s, you need more time outside of school. So you need to cut out any of the school hours you’re working outside of your, you know, 40 hours a week. You cannot be bringing stuff from school home when you need to be working on your own master’s schoolwork. Okay, so you’re gonna have to adjust how you run your class so that you can cut back on grading primarily.

Rebecca Joyner [00:21:57]:
That’s my first recommendation because that seems to be the greatest time suck for teachers. I have a playlist on Spotify all about grading. I will link in the show notes. You can check out all these different ways you can cut back on that. Again, if it feels like you’re barely grading anything, okay, maybe it’s just for the next year or 2 and then you can go back to grading a lot more things. But maybe you’ll also see that you don’t have to grade as much stuff as you were grading and your students can still be successful. So absolutely cut back on grading for this season. And another thing I would say for this season is potentially outsource Curriculum writing and lesson planning.

Rebecca Joyner [00:22:27]:
This might be a season where one of the ways you get through your master’s is by using someone else’s pre-made curriculum, whether that’s It’s Not Rocket Science or something else. And if this seems like something you don’t want to do because you’re like me and you love writing curriculum and you love lesson planning, like, again, this is just for a season. You can go back to doing all that from scratch in a different season, but maybe in this season you need to kind of like plug and chug a little bit more. I have a very early podcast episode I did with one of my friends, Diana. Who we were in the same teacher training program in college, and she taught anatomy for like 6 years, I think, before she had her first baby. And then when she had her first baby, she bought my anatomy curriculum, which was kind of insane because I was like, why? You’re such an experienced anatomy teacher. But her point was she bought it so that she could give the resources to her long-term sub. And then she was like, honestly, I just don’t want to even like think about it.

Rebecca Joyner [00:23:19]:
I just want to walk in and Do what you’ve told me to do. And I also want to just like switch things up and try something new. And so then she’s like, I know I have other seasons where I can go back to, you know, kind of piecing all these things together myself. So I just want to encourage you to outsource as much as you possibly can and to cut back on grading. Those are my 2 greatest recommendations. Question number 6 is from Jay Baker. He writes, in a required course like South Carolina High School Biology 1 on a block schedule, what is the best or most effective balance between direct instruction and student-led inquiry? So my answer to this is that it’s not cut and dry, especially though I will say for like high school Biology 1, typically that’s going to be 9th graders. I would expect them to need a lot more support and a lot more direct instruction in the beginning of the year, but to grow in independence as the year goes on.

Rebecca Joyner [00:24:10]:
So I like to start the year, and you can hopefully see these themes in any of my It’s Not Rocket Science curricula, whether it’s like a 9th grade biology, 8th grade physical science, or like Sophomore chemistry, junior anatomy curriculum. Okay. I like to start off with more structured inquiry, more guided inquiry, if you will, where like our very first unit in each of my curriculum, there is like a full-blown inquiry investigation, but like I’m helping the students through every piece of it to really support them. And then as the year goes on, they’ll have more open-ended labs that they’re doing on their own. So I would try to make it gradual in that regard. The next thing I would recommend though is all year long, and especially since you mentioned you’re on a 90-minute schedule, I like to never lecture or do any sort of direct instruction for more than 15 minutes at a time. In a 90-minute class period, I would not wanna have more than 30 minutes total of lecture if I can avoid it. Obviously there are different exceptions, but typically on a 90-minute block schedule, maybe we do like 15 minutes of lecture and then we’re doing an activity, and then maybe another 15 minutes of lecture and then another activity or some reinforcing practice.

Rebecca Joyner [00:25:16]:
That kind of thing. So those are kind of my quote unquote rules that I tried to follow when I was on a block schedule. Now, in an ideal universe, I would say if I had to give it numbers, I would like to spend 35% of my time with students doing inquiry or like discovery things. I’d like to spend 20% of the time doing direct instruction, another 35% of my time doing what I would call like synthesis work, like putting it all together, making connections, following up that inquiry and direct instruction with a lab, with a project, with a research activity, doing group work, even if it is practice problems. So I call that like synthesis. And then another 10% doing like formal assessment, or summative assessment I should say. Formal sounds like formative, just structured assessment like a test or like a big project, something like that. So that would be my personal breakdown, how I would like to spend it.

Rebecca Joyner [00:26:07]:
But again, just my opinion, so kind of take it or leave it if that’s helpful. Question number 7 comes from Rhi. How do you handle coworkers that are not educating your students in one of their other classes? Quick answer for you, Ree, and I would say this, and you may not like this quick answer, but that is just so not my realm of responsibility. That is so outside what I can control. And I want to encourage you to control the controllables. You are a human being that has finite energy and finite resources and finite time. I’m not going to be siphoning off any of that. For what’s going on in another teacher’s classroom.

Rebecca Joyner [00:26:42]:
That is just none of my business. Okay, what I would say is what I say to my students in the past, what I say to my children now in my house: different teachers, different rules. And what I say to my kids: different families, different rules. So different classrooms are going to do different things, different households are going to do different things. It is an important life lesson for students and children to learn how to be adaptable In different environments. So it’s important for you to fall in line when you’re in my classroom and do things the way that I have trained you to do them. I don’t care what you’re doing next door or what you’re doing down the hall. You can adapt to those environments.

Rebecca Joyner [00:27:20]:
Students and children are incredibly adaptable, but this is also a skill that is worth practicing and a muscle that’s worth building. They need to know their whole life how to respond to different bosses or work under different authority figures, or even just interact with different peers. That have different belief systems, different priorities, different values, different rules, different expectations. So this is actually a good life skill. It’s a good thing for you to practice setting boundaries in terms of where you’re going to allow your energy to go. And then it’s a good thing for them to learn. And you can just straight up just say, like, different strokes for different folks. That’s a good old, like, Southern rhyme for you that you can say too.

Rebecca Joyner [00:28:01]:
Or you can just say, hey, None of my business what goes on down the hall. I’m here and I’m going to control the 90 minutes that I have with you, the 50 minutes I have with you to do what I think is best for you. And so you kind of need to fall in line here. All right. I know I’ve been a little long-winded. The last 3 questions are fast. I promise. Number 8 comes from Lydia.

Rebecca Joyner [00:28:19]:
Help with engagement with courses where my curriculum is scripted. All right, Lydia, here’s what I have to say. I would be finding a new job. I’m not even kidding. I’m not trying to be dramatic. I think this is. Insane. If your admin is giving you a scripted curriculum, like, to me, that is like neutering you as a teacher.

Rebecca Joyner [00:28:40]:
That is, that to me is them saying they want an AI robot, not a real human teacher teaching their students. I genuinely, I could not work at a school that didn’t trust me enough to actually teach students, that wanted me to be a robot and read a curriculum. Like, They could hire any warm body to do this. They don’t need a trained science professional to teach a class that’s scripted. I mean, honestly, they don’t even need a warm body nowadays. I’m sure there’s some sort of tech platform, tech software they could plug in the script and the computer would read it out loud to their students, and they could just have some sub that they pay $75 a day to monitor the class. Okay. I would push back so hard on this because this is, especially for science, like this is so far From inquiry teaching.

Rebecca Joyner [00:29:25]:
This is the opposite of engagement. This is so far from the Next Generation Science Standards science and engineering practices. Like, how could you possibly engage students in those practices if you’re having to follow a script? Like, it just makes zero sense to me. So I’m going to answer your question by saying I have no idea how you engage students in a curriculum that’s scripted. And I would say Find another job. That would be my best advice for you. Okay, question number 9 is kind of like a compilation of questions from a few people. Abigail, Betsy, and CD, they asked, what digital tools do you use to create your worksheets and activities? How to start writing my own curriculum? And what was your greatest struggle in transitioning from a classroom teacher to a content creator? So first I’ll start with the last question.

Rebecca Joyner [00:30:14]:
Hardest thing when I left the classroom to do It’s Not Rocket Science full-time and to be a parent full-time, which is really what motivated the transition. Was missing students. I miss students every single day I do this job. Every single time I come up with a new instructional resource, every time I tweak a lab, every time I talk to any of you about any of your scenarios, I miss being with students. It is the number one thing that makes me want to go back to the classroom full-time. The only thing I care more about than missing students is missing time with my family, which is why at this point I’m still at home. Being a full-time stay-at-home mom, because I’ve got kids that are not all, you know, classroom age, and running It’s Not Rocket Science and doing this podcast is kind of a beast. I’ve said it before, this is like so much more than I ever thought it would be.

Rebecca Joyner [00:30:59]:
Totally never expected to ever do this, you know, full-time. And so that has been my greatest struggle since leaving the classroom. I wouldn’t call myself a content creator, especially since I haven’t even been on social media all summer, and I’ve really set like hard boundaries there. I guess I, I would call myself a curriculum writer and a podcaster, but the hardest struggle has just been missing students. I miss them so much. My ideal world would be to teach at a school like Tuesday, Thursdays. If I was at a school that had like a college schedule where like Tuesday, Thursday you had 90-minute classes, Monday, Wednesday, Friday you had like 50-minute classes. That way I could like teach part-time, still be with students, but then have the majority of my time to still do It’s Not Rocket Science and the podcast.

Rebecca Joyner [00:31:39]:
But I don’t know if that exists. So that’d be my biggest struggle. Digital tools I use to create my stuff. I’m so boring. I use PowerPoint and Word and Google Docs and Google Sheets. That’s, that’s it. Nothing fancy. And then how to start writing your own curriculum.

Rebecca Joyner [00:31:54]:
I have an entire podcast series on this. It starts with episode 80 and the series is called Curriculum Design 101. I will link that in the show notes. There’s also a playlist of all those curated episodes. I think it’s like 10 long. You can go back and listen to those. And then question number 10 comes from Kaylee and Larissa. How did you integrate the Bible when you taught at a Christian school? I saved this question for last because I know this is a niche amount of you following me that maybe care to hear my answer to this.

Rebecca Joyner [00:32:27]:
So at this point, if you’re like, I don’t care, you can just plug off because that’s what we’re gonna kind of end the episode talking about. You won’t have missed anything else, but I do think it’s worth asking because You know, multiple people have asked it, and then also I get emailed this a lot because people ask me to add something, you know, to my curricula about this. And I don’t really have a plan to ever do that, and here’s why. I don’t have anything specific that I did for biblical integration when I taught at a private Christian school. The school I personally taught at was mostly focused on mentorship and one-to-one relationships with students. So I was a mentor for some individual students that had its own kind of expectations there. And then also I was assigned like a group of girls. When I first started teaching there, the 9th grade girls, I was their like mentor teacher, and I was with them from 9th through 12th grade.

Rebecca Joyner [00:33:20]:
I was always their chaperone, always their volunteer. Out of retreats, I was their teacher. I was their Bible teacher also every year, the 4 years that I had them. Like, they were my— people that I most plugged in with. Now, I obviously had relationships with students in other grades because I taught, you know, science for all these different levels. But in terms of like mentorship and relationship and discipleship, those were the people I really focused on. But that was a core quality of my school. Like, they even stopped calling teachers teachers and they call teachers mentors.

Rebecca Joyner [00:33:52]:
So that was kind of unique to the DNA of that school. But because of that, I’m telling you all that because I feel like faith conversations naturally became integrated into class discussions as students had questions, and it wasn’t anything structured I was doing. I appreciated that the school gave me the autonomy to teach how I wanted to teach in my classroom, and I didn’t have to, like, do a specific Bible lesson to, like, check a box that the science class I was teaching was, like, biblically integrated. Your schools obviously may run differently, but I just feel like the conversations naturally come up so much in science classes. Like, it’s so fun, you know? For example, if you’re like, what do you mean conversations? Like, teaching heredity, teaching evolution, especially teaching about the cell, like seeing how intricately designed yet unified all life forms are is like a great way you can bring in Psalm 139. And just like the intricacies of the Creator. I just, I, I personally, I didn’t change the content that I was teaching from what I taught in public schools. I just had different conversations because obviously I wasn’t having these conversations teaching at a public state school.

Rebecca Joyner [00:35:06]:
The conversations were different, not the content. I taught everything the same because I wanted students to be really well prepared content-wise if they left our school and went to a public school or, you know, when they went on to college or whatever it may be. So I didn’t do any formal biblical integration, but I think there are just so many opportunities in biology and anatomy, especially. We’re learning about like the intricacies of the cell and all of that kind of point. You can point to God’s glory as a creator. And when things are bigger than we can possibly understand, we can point to like a God who we believe as Christians teaching at a Christian school is trustworthy. And that part of having faith is to trust the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your mind, and with all your strength, and not trust in yourself. And trust that the secret things, the scriptures say, belong to God.

Rebecca Joyner [00:35:59]:
And like, I am not meant to know or understand all things. And the comfort is I can trust in the character of God and then hold all these things that I don’t understand, that I can’t explain, that science even can’t necessarily explain. I can hold them with open hands. Because I don’t necessarily need to know. So I just think it’s a constant, like, ongoing awareness and conversation with students of helping them to notice and see God at work in all things. That is how I would say I would, like, do biblical integration. I would pray every day on the way to school for God to open my eyes to see ways to bring him up in conversation, just like I do with my children in my house. Like, I’m always looking for ways to point them to God.

Rebecca Joyner [00:36:40]:
And then do that in my classroom to point my students to him, and also just to look for ways to like see students and care for them where they are. The last thing I’ll say is if you want to know any of those verses I just kind of referenced, or just to read my specific kind of way that I address teaching evolution at a Christian school, I have a blog post about this I wrote back in 2021, and I will link in the show notes. You can also just go to itsanrocketscienceclassroom.com and type in Christian or evolution and it’ll pop up. It gets like some of the most hits of any of my writing I’ve ever done since I started that blog. And that is going to give you a full-formed answer to that specific topic, which I know can feel controversial to some people. I will just say here, because this episode’s getting really long, it does not feel controversial to me at all. I don’t know, I don’t see any reason why you cannot love science and love what we have discovered from scientific evidence about evolution and not believe that God is creator of the universe. To me, those things do not necessarily have to conflict with each other.

Rebecca Joyner [00:37:43]:
And if you want kind of like my very informal thesis on that, you can check out that blog post on my website. All right, y’all, thanks for being here. Thanks for hanging with me for 40 minutes if you’ve made it all the way to the end of this episode. And I know I mentioned so many things, so all that’s linked in the, in the show notes at itsnotrocketscienceclassroom.com/episode200. And 50. And if you have not left a review for the podcast, I would love it if you would. Like, it’s just a really simple way. I know it takes you a couple minutes, but it’s just a way that you can kind of support me and support this podcast and help me help more science teachers.

Rebecca Joyner [00:38:19]:
That’s my goal, is just to reach as many high school science teachers as possible and support them in what they’re doing, because it’s a hard job and I want to help you guys out. So I would love it if you would leave a rating and a review for the podcast, or Share this episode with a friend. All right, teacher friends, that wraps up today’s episode. If you’re looking for an easy way to start simplifying your life as a secondary science teacher, head to itsnotrocketscienceclassroom.com/challenge to grab your Classroom Reset Challenge. And guess what? It’s totally free. Thanks so much for tuning in, and I’ll see you here next week. Until then, I’ll be rooting for you, teacher friend.