Front Matter

We would like to thank professor Dr. Valerie Otero for writing the National Science Foundation grant that funded the Streamline to Mastery program, which was the most meaningful professional development program of our careers. It was through this program that we realized the importance of our daily work. Due to collaboration within the program, we began to see ourselves as professionals, researchers, and master teachers. We now see ourselves as agents of change who believe we can be leaders within the field of education. Within the Streamline to Mastery community, we would also like to acknowledge and thank Emily Quinty and Shelly Belleau. Both of these women were instrumental in our journey of viewing ourselves as master teachers. Without their support and guidance, some of us would probably not still be teachers. We would like to thank the National Science Foundation for its financial support through this grant (NSF #DUE-0934921, #DUE-1340083).

Alisa Grimes: I would like to thank my husband, Brandon, for always reminding me of how proud he is of all of my accomplishments and giving me permission to have the confidence necessary for writing a book. I would also like to thank Alisa Hansen for always reminding me of all of my successes despite the challenges I have faced. Thank you to my high school administrative team Lyn Bair and Zoe Stern who have supported me in my educational practices even if at times they may seem less than typical. And, of course, this book would not have been possible without “Team Book”—Shannon, Nicole, and Becky—and all of their support and hard work.

Nicole Schrode: I would like to thank my husband, Will, and children, Ryann and Macy, for allowing me to work on this book while teaching and momming. I would like to acknowledge Alisa, Rebecca, and Shannon for being such an inspirational team to work with. I would also like to thank the teachers that I have worked with who have modeled what integrity, professionalism, and stellar pedagogy look like: Joshua Wickline and all of the iterations of the amazing science department at Longmont High School I have worked with in my tenure there.

Rebecca Stober: None of this would be possible without the love, support, and patience of my wonderful family. I owe a debt of gratitude to my parents for raising me to believe I can achieve whatever I strive for, and to my husband, Christian, and children, Javier and Santiago, for their endless encouragement. I would be remiss not to mention the incredible community of support Streamline to Mastery has provided me: from mentors like Shelly Belleau and Emily Quinty to colleagues like Alisa, Nicole, and Shannon. Additionally, I would like to thank all of the staff, past and future, of Mapleton Expeditionary School of the Arts, who showed me what school and community could and should be, especially my beloved friends and colleagues, Erica Loppnow and Stefanie Trenchik.

Shannon Wachowski: Thank you to all the wonderful, amazing, and supportive “teacher friends” who have counseled, motivated, and inspired me. Specifically, Team Book (Nicole, Alisa, and Becky) and Team Carpool (Justine Staelin, Julie Thomas, and Stephanie Evans). I also want to send massive appreciation to my husband Neil for his patience and understanding, not just while working on this book but pretty much every day. You let me be me while also challenging me to be a better version of myself.

When you stop learning how to teach, you stop teaching people how to learn. This is a phrase I coined just before applying for the National Science Foundation grants that supported the authors of this book to build and participate in the Streamline to Mastery program. As a brief history of the program, I had been a professor at the University of Colorado Boulder for eight years when I applied for the National Science Foundation's Robert Noyce Master Teaching Fellows grant in 2009 followed by another in 2013. By that time, I had come to the personal realization that we as teachers never fully learn how to teach; rather, teaching is an intellectual journey. Great teachers, like great scientists, are always finding challenges and novel, complex problems that must be addressed. The idea behind the Streamline to Mastery program was that teachers would work together to investigate real problems that emerge in their own teaching practice and in doing so, they would generate generalizable knowledge that could be shared with other teachers. This process would lead to expanded professional identities and satisfaction, and to establishing agency and voice that would allow for engagement in the national dialogue about teaching. These were the goals of the Streamline to Mastery program. The program worked! After several years of participating in the program, one teacher said, “I feel stronger as a professional than I've ever felt. I feel like I have a lot of research backing me on the methods I choose to use. And so I feel very empowered … it's helping me to feel like that role [being a workshop leader] is a part of who I am now.” From 2010 to the present, the 21 teachers who participated in the program collectively published 21 articles (mostly peer-reviewed), they presented 93 workshops at national and local conferences and within their school districts, and they gave 73 conference and poster presentations.

One of several factors that motivated me to build the Streamline to Mastery program was that as an academic, I often found myself at powerful national meetings involving heavy hitters from all over the nation gathered together to discuss issues regarding “teacher quality” in K–12 education. I would look around the room and see scientists, teacher educators, professional society leaders and the only people that were missing were real K–12 teachers. At that time I knew that teachers have so much to share with the community, but often simply did not have the professional opportunities to share it. I figured that by bringing them to conferences to present defensible research on teaching and learning, they could begin to participate in this dialogue. Again, it worked. About attending conferences, a teacher said, “It's been the number-one influencer in my ability to see myself as an influencer of change … which is what I wanted to do when I came into education. But I think without Streamline, I wouldn't have the tools or the confidence to actually do it.”

The Streamline to Mastery program distinguishes between publishable, defensible research and what is often referred to as “action research.” This distinction is necessary for two reasons. First, it is easy to jump to erroneous conclusions in classroom research (e.g., “I know the lesson worked because students were engaged”). Yet, when we prepare findings for defense among other researchers, we often find our conclusions to be weak, that we need to define hypothesized outcomes with more precision, and that we need further investigation. We then work in teams to understand these complicated results and this is the process of critical examination of our own practice. This level of examination leads to greater understanding of how our students are experiencing the class and better control over our own impactful behaviors as teachers. One teacher said, “Having a common thing we were all talking about was really powerful … we're [all] teaching it, we came and talked about it, we researched it. I think also the research—picking a problem of practice and then tracing that all the way through, then analyzing it, writing about it, and even getting it published—that process has made me look at my teaching and my students and data in a really different way. It has made me feel like more of a professional.” Another said, “And the first conference I went to … was really transformative for me, just to see that was possible and to see who was doing educational research and how that happened … it made me excited to look at my own teaching and see that … there were some applications that I could look at within my own classroom, but that other people might even care about … it made me feel like I was important in teaching and maybe bigger.”

Second, in defending work at national research conferences, teachers practice speaking the professional language of scientists and academics—a language that is necessary for participating in some of the national dialogues about educational change. Teachers also find acceptance in a community that takes their work seriously and thus, they begin to establish agency, voice, and confidence as capable and necessary contributors to the national dialogue. One teacher said, “Professionally, it's given me the ability to have more leadership capacity, have a broader range of a skill base … professionally it's given me a stepping stone into a leadership role too, if I want to, because people see that Streamline on your resume and they're really curious and they're really excited … It's done so much for me in both capacities.”

The Streamline to Mastery model is based on how scientific communities operate and communicate. Groups work on relevant, complex problems and then multiple groups get together to share newly generated knowledge and to discuss recurring challenges in both theory and practice. This is how we generate the knowledge necessary to implement theorized ideals in the real world. The same process is necessary in education. The challenges that teachers and schools face on a daily basis are highly complex, and require that teachers have the space and time to not only to work on these challenges, but to work with other teachers to establish this collaborative problem-solving expertise. A Streamline to Mastery teacher said, “We listen to each other, we help each other through challenges. We work together on innovating our practice by sharing new things … everyone has that same goal in mind, that we want the best for our students and we want to find the best way to do that and find the best way of helping them grow.” Another said, “I don't know where I'd be as a teacher now if I hadn't had the opportunity to attend conferences and innovate my own teaching and stay up to date on current practices—that's huge. And it helps me be creative, and it keeps me fresh and it keeps me growing, because I'm always trying to get better … I think my students are better off because I've had Streamline there for me.”

Many of the students of Streamline to Mastery teachers have backgrounds similar to my own. I am a Chicana, first-generation college student who grew up in a carnival (state fair), Spanish-speaking family in New Mexico, working 30 hours per week in high school. For me, education has always been a privilege and physics became a source of self-advocacy and empowerment the instant I found it, which was not until I found college. High school presented a challenge because about math and science, I was told, “you have to learn this to get a good job.” I remember thinking, “Can't I just learn it because it is beautiful, because it is worth learning?” That is when I set out to create situations in which people can establish a sense of agency and voice in their work and where the STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) content and the learning process could be sources of self-love. This led to my development of the Streamline to Mastery model (along with the Learning Assistant model, for which I am also known). The model by which the Streamline to Mastery teachers produce knowledge is the same model that they use with their students—students work together in their classes to establish scientific principles on the basis of data. This process is empowering. One Streamline to Mastery teacher's student said, “but we feel good because evidence has our backs,” (Ross and Otero, 2012). Another student said, “I like the sense of authority we had in the classroom. We were viewed not just as students but as scientists, it felt kind of accomplished, like I'm discovering things, and it made me feel a little bit proud.” Another said, “Once you have felt a sense of accomplishment for something, you are just waiting for that feeling to come back.” Similarly, Streamline to Mastery teachers were empowered, “I felt empowered by my research. I think that it shifted my perspective. I think that without Streamline, I would have felt trapped. I do feel empowered and valued in both areas of my life [personally and professionally]. I feel more confident.” Through their research, their local and national leadership, and through curriculum and policy involvement, these teachers have found self-love, and problem-solving and presentation skills that allow them to work with reform ideals so that they make sense in their unique teaching contexts and to share principles thus generated with other teachers and teacher leaders. They have become agents of change. An early publication demonstrated how the teachers slowly but surely took over leadership and direction of the Streamline to Mastery community (Ross et al., 2014). I have personally watched these teachers take on increasing responsibility for education on a broad scale and I have watched them gain agency and influence throughout the educational community. Those who benefit most are the students who learn how to advocate for themselves through evidence, and find empowerment through reasoning and defending their own ideas.

In each chapter of this book, Streamline to Mastery teachers provide firsthand experiences of how this took place in their lives. The message reveals the need for a very simple federal policy decision: Support teachers to engage in professional activity by providing a small salary supplement for engaging in professional activity.

We are grateful to the National Science Foundation (NSF #DUE-0934921, #DUE-1340083) for providing funding that helped us reveal the best kept secret: teachers are the innovators; they just need time, space, and a few resources to do it.

Valerie K. Otero

Professor, STEM Education and Physics Education Research

Executive Director, Founder, Co-Founder Learning Assistant (LA) model and International LA Alliance

Executive Director, Founder, Physics through Evidence, Empowerment through Reasoning

University of Colorado Boulder

There we were, enjoying our farewell dinner together with our two mentors, finishing our five-year commitment to the Streamline to Mastery program at the University of Colorado (CU). The Streamline to Mastery program was created by Dr. Valerie Otero at CU and was funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) (NSF #DUE-0934921, #DUE-1340083). While participating in Streamline to Mastery the four authors of this book came together with pre-service teachers, CU graduate students, other master teachers, novice teachers, and university faculty. We explored, researched, and reported our findings regarding the way student-centered, induction-based learning strategies affect student outcomes. This five-year program was the most instrumental professional development to which any of us have been exposed. Through the program we came to see ourselves as educational leaders, published researchers, educational conference presenters, and experts in the field of student-centered pedagogy, specifically around the PEER Physics curriculum. During our tenure with Streamline to Mastery we piloted, edited, contributed content, and researched many aspects of the curriculum (more information about Streamline to Mastery and the PEER Physics program can be found throughout the book).

As we sat together at dinner, celebrating our accomplishments and acknowledging the team we had built, our mentor Shelly Belleau threw out the statement, “You should all write a book about your experiences!” This statement was said in passing, and we all kind of paused and gulped. Could we really write a book? Is she crazy? But the idea stuck with us. We all knew that we wanted to keep working together, to keep pushing each other toward professionalism, leadership, and pedagogical shifts. We decided to at least try. We felt that our experience was special, transferable, and worth sharing. Therefore, with prodding and convincing, we submitted a book proposal to the American Association of Physics Teachers’ (AAPT) publisher American Institute of Physics (AIP). To our shock, the proposal was accepted!

We are proud of the work we have done together and excited to share our experience and expertise with novice and veteran teachers who are looking for a pathway toward professionalism and leadership within the field of education. We hope you find some connection and camaraderie through the reading of our shared journey. Thank you for your interest.

I (Rebecca Stober) did not set out to become a teacher. Growing up, I loved learning and reading. Nothing excites me more than getting lost in a book or that moment when a complex idea suddenly makes sense. I lived for that light-bulb moment and grew to love school at a young age. Despite that love of learning, I found by the end of high school that I had somehow internalized a common societal precept—that only individuals who were not good at doing other jobs became teachers. For this reason, I saw myself as becoming something greater than “just a teacher.” Likewise, while I loved reading, I did not think becoming a librarian was a worthy enough goal; my ambitions pushed me to seek what I, and society, would be considered as an impressive career. After falling in love with science in my high school biology classes, I decided the best choice for me was to become a doctor. Needless to say, while medicine fascinated me, I never quite took the steps necessary to apply to medical school. Instead, I found myself in an alternative licensure program to become a teacher. When I first entered the classroom, I was reminded of my first love: learning. This time, however, I discovered the joy and beauty of helping others learn. Seeing the light in a student's eyes when they had their own light-bulb moment became my new goal. I also found that as a new teacher, there was so much for me to learn! I thrived in my education classes and loved learning about pedagogy and different educational philosophies. It was the joy I received from learning about my new craft that helped me survive the other, numerous challenges of my first few years teaching.

At first, it was my intent to teach for a few years, then finally get around to attending medical school. After three years in the classroom, however, I discovered that I had unknowingly found my passion: education. Through the insight and advice of one of my students, I made the decision to stay in the classroom and let go of my original goal of a career in medicine. Seeing the success my students achieved that year left me feeling fulfilled and ready to take on the world. I truly felt that I was making a difference at the small, low-income school in which I worked. After two more years teaching in a low-income school, however, I realized my energy and enthusiasm had begun to dry up.

Since my economically depressed school experienced high teacher turnover, much of the school-led professional development centered on supporting teachers new to the profession. In my fourth year of teaching, I had maxed out the learning being offered by my school. Additionally, my instructional coach was also my principal (and evaluator), and she never had time to meet due to all her other obligations. Instead, nearly every coaching meeting was canceled, and I was left to fend for myself. In the end, I felt like my growth was stagnating and that I was stuck in a rut. I found myself questioning my decision to stay in the field of education and wondering if I should leave to pursue medicine. While I continued to love my students and helping them find their inner scientists, I myself had stopped learning. As a result, I no longer felt joy while in the classroom. At the advice of one of my assistant principals, I found an administrative program to learn about becoming a principal; perhaps I felt stagnant because I was ready to move on to other leadership opportunities. While school leadership had never been a goal, I moved toward it in the hopes it would bring back some of the joy I had lost. This is a path often taken by teachers who want to further their careers since there are not many promotion opportunities for teachers. Simultaneously, a former colleague invited me to apply to a grant-funded teacher leadership opportunity through a local university. In the hopes of finding affirmation in my decision to stay in teaching, I jumped headfirst into both of these opportunities.

As I entered my fourth year of teaching, I had the opportunity to become a master teacher in a research group funded through the National Science Foundation called Streamline to Mastery. This group provided funding for teachers to work in teacher research teams, along with university faculty and pre-service teachers. In the process, support and instruction was given to help master teachers and pre-service teachers conduct and lead their own research and professional development. As I joined Streamline to Mastery, I quickly discovered I was not alone in my feelings about teaching; other teachers in the program were also starting to feel burnt out with teaching and were considering a change of profession. Finding out I was not alone helped me continue to teach and continue to grow as a professional, seeking out ways to identify as a leader even while staying in the classroom. In particular, my work with Alisa, Nicole, and Shannon helped me develop into a better leader and teacher.

Throughout her 16 years as a teacher, Alisa has offered her support to majority-minority populations in various ways ranging from cultivating authentic caring relationships with her students and their parents, both as a teacher and as a coach, to participating in ongoing discourse regarding best instructional practices for how to better serve these communities. Nine years ago, she applied for and was invited to participate in Streamline to Mastery. It only took a few months of participating to recognize how much this program was going to change her perspective on teaching. Dr. Valerie Otero, who organized the program, was the first individual to treat Alisa like a professional. In her years working as a master teacher, she enjoyed collaborating with the University of Colorado Boulder's Education Department to research and collectively problem-solve which instructional practices best support students learning science. Her research questions have examined ways to empower the students she works with by providing them with agency and choice in their educational experiences. This research has emphasized another one of her goals as a teacher: shifting the responsibility of learning away from the teacher and to the student, thus creating independent thinkers. This goal has been supported with the work she has done with the Process Oriented Guided Inquiry Learning (POGIL) project as a facilitator for adult learners and as a leader for this instructional model in her current teaching position. She also has the opportunity to share her learning and findings when running monthly professional development sessions within her school district and with working with the STEP UP program in which she leads professional development for ambassadors on how to facilitate lessons to promote more women to pursue physics.

Change and growth have always motivated Nicole. Even the way she got into teaching was based on change. She never thought she would be a teacher. In high school and college, she loved science and nature. She loved how science existed whether humans were in the world or not. A mountain was just there, and a stream, and gravity. We, as scientists, just study, classify, and name this stuff. Nicole majored in ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Colorado. She loved learning chemistry, physics, and all the branches of biology. With her degree in hand, and vast learning under her belt, she had no idea what to do next. After some searching, she found environmental consulting. Although Nicole loved the field work, she knew after a few years that this was not her passion. She took a leave of absence and went off to the Berkshire Mountains of Massachusetts to teach at an outdoor education center for New York City students and Nicole found her calling. After two seasons of outdoor education, Nicole was accepted to the New York Teaching Fellow alternative teacher licensure program. She began teaching biology and environmental science at a performing arts high school in Manhattan. So much changed once she started teaching. Nicole's world view changed, her attitudes toward human rights, and her sleep patterns. Since beginning her teaching career 16 years ago, Nicole has taught at three schools, all in very different socioeconomic and geographic locations. However, the one thing that has remained throughout her career is her desire and ability to change. In the beginning, Nicole taught in a more traditional fashion, much like the type of schooling she received in suburban New Jersey in the 1990s. After participating in multiple professional learning teams, finishing a master's thesis, and continually reading journal articles, she realized that students need more; more talking, more interacting, and more experimenting. In 2014, Nicole joined the Streamline to Master program at CU. Through this grant, Nicole has conducted in-depth research in her classroom, finding what actually works for all students to be successful in science classrooms. She has also become a teacher leader within her school, district, and community at CU. Above all, her teaching philosophy has changed.

Before becoming a teacher, Shannon was a practicing chemical engineer, working for a shingle manufacturing company. After a few years, Shannon decided the work was not fulfilling and she needed a change. Having tutored chemistry while working on her undergraduate degree, Shannon decided to pursue a career in education.

While research was not a large part of her formal training, she understood the basic components and used them in her work as an engineer to conduct quality studies on granules and asphalt (some of the main components of shingles). In her education graduate work, the culminating project was to conduct action research on an education topic of her choosing. Based on her work as a quality engineer, this was not a difficult task, but it also felt more like just checking a box to complete a requirement for graduation. Up until she joined Streamline to Mastery in 2014, research had only been part of her day when she was helping students carry out lab experiments. Shannon did not consider herself a researcher nor did she feel like she possessed the skills or support to conduct research in her classroom. To be honest, she did not even really know that was a thing. Teachers conduct research about and to inform their own pedagogy? People much smarter and capable than us must be doing that work, right? Through participation in Streamline to Mastery, Shannon was supported to conduct classroom research. She learned how to write a testable research question, how to collect and code responses and other forms of data, and how to try to account for all the variation present in a classroom and with students. She shared her research at poster sessions and district professional development which gave her more confidence in her abilities. When Shannon felt like something in her class was not working, she did not just jump ship—she thought about all the factors, conducted a literature review to see what other information was out there, and worked with her Streamline to Mastery colleagues to conduct a study and make informed changes to her classroom. Additionally, this group provided a community to discuss problems of practice and a support network to fight feelings of teacher burnout.

Discovering that Alisa, Nicole, Shannon, and I shared so many similarities helped me form an immediate connection with the teachers I would be working with over the next five years. Together, we worked with university faculty and pre-service teachers to design and implement our own professional development, all grounded in research we, ourselves, would conduct. Our inner scientists were immediately excited with the opportunity to engage in this intellectual pursuit. Over the next five years, we were able to see positive impacts with our research studies and grow exponentially as teachers and as teacher leaders. We have published three peer-reviewed research articles and delivered countless professional development sessions at conferences across the country. We have also been selected for leadership opportunities with both the American Chemical Society and the American Association of Physics Teachers, and we even spent a day at the Capitol in D.C. meeting with members of Congress to advocate for educational policy. Streamline to Mastery brought the joy and excitement back to our lives, and once again we found ourselves excited to be in the field of education and incredibly fulfilled. I should add that personally, while all of this was happening, I also found a master's program in school administration and completed the coursework necessary to receive a principal license. Never in that program did I feel excited or fulfilled; instead, completing the program left me feeling overworked and, if anything, even more burnt out.

Our experiences within the Streamline to Mastery program seems to challenge the current paradigm that strong educational leaders need to leave the classroom to run schools or become instructional coaches. What we each instead needed were opportunities to be a leader within the broader field of education: by conducting and presenting educational research, developing and delivering high-quality professional development, and even helping to write and field-test new curriculum. The best part about the leadership opportunities we gained through participation in Streamline to Mastery was that it did not require us to leave the classroom. Instead, we were given a chance to lead our own professional development and, as a result, gain the career fulfillment and excitement to take back with us to our classrooms. For this reason, we are excited to co-write this book to share this experience with others; perhaps you too are feeling burnt out or stuck in your current teaching practice and could benefit from some leadership opportunities—opportunities that will help you grow and increase your impact in education, but still remain in the classroom teaching the students you love. If so, we hope our stories help you find your own path to greater job fulfillment and, above all, joy.

This book is intended to be a resource to educators on their own professional journey, whether that journey is just beginning for pre-service teachers or continuing for veteran teachers. We have included personal narratives to share our own experiences as well as research-based theories and ideas. Reflection questions have been provided at the end of each chapter for use individually or with a community of learners. The goal is to provide a way to dive more deeply into the content and develop action plans.

In the following chapters, you will learn about the history of Streamline to Mastery, the National Science Foundation–funded program that brought the four of us together, as well as some suggestions on how to start your own community of learning and why it's so valuable to developing as a professional. We'll discuss how important community is to support teachers and avoid burnout; meeting regularly with like-minded teachers through the Streamline to Mastery program provided the support and community we each needed to continue to overcome the vast challenges one faces in education and remain excited to teach. Through this group, we were also given the opportunity to collaborate and achieve much more than we could have individually. Next, we will look at how the entire experience transformed us as individuals, educators, and leaders. Over the last five years, we have each gained more confidence in leading the learning of our students, as well as leading in other arenas. We will share what we have each learned and how you too can build your own confidence and professional presence within the field of education.

In Chaps. 3 through 5, we will discuss aspects of professionalism and teacher leadership that can help lead to implementation of education research in the classroom, impacting educational policy and empowering students. Research was a large component of Streamline to Mastery. You will learn about our own experiences conducting formalized educational research, as well as some information to help you get started researching in your classroom. Additionally, working with the Streamline to Mastery group led us to becoming more involved in the national conversation around education. We will share our experience with the AAPT Mastery Teacher Policy Fellowship as well as provide some background and context on education policy and the different avenues of involvement available. We will also look closely at how our research experiences led us to change our teaching practices. In all of our classrooms, we now work to empower our students to take the lead in their own learning. Students are provided more choice and engage in daily activities that allow them to make their own scientific discoveries and find meaning for themselves. Such practices have transformed our classrooms.

Finally, we will discuss how we each became agents of change, both within our classrooms and in the larger educational community. This book will provide some insight into how others can also become agents of change. Every teacher has stories to tell about their lives both in and out of the classroom, the lessons they learned, and how their lives have changed as a result of their commitment to their students. The narratives described in this book are different because they are the result of teachers being treated as professionals. As a result of the opportunities we have been granted, four teachers have been transformed into teacher leaders. Teachers who have the confidence to present research done not by a graduate student about their students, but by them, where they crafted the research questions based on their own problems of practice previously identified within their classrooms. They knew the results could be shared beyond a single classroom. These teachers had the confidence to lobby their state congressional representatives in Washington, D.C., about issues of teacher retention and recruitment alongside their proposed solutions with confidence. As a result of these lobbying meetings some of these representatives have even been convinced to co-sponsor legislation that supports teacher leaders staying in the classroom. Upon reflection on our successes, we have identified crucial moments in our transformations from “normal teachers” to teacher leaders, and this book has outlined these moments and key decisions we made to result in our successes. It is our hope that by sharing these narratives we can provide the reader with some guidelines to make changes within their lives that help cultivate the passion and conviction to not only survive as a teacher but to thrive as a leader and professional.