Maya McFadden photo
Mrs. G in class: "All group members' voices should be contributing."
A brick house with a raised foundation and a hardwood front porch emerged from the minds of Augusta Lewis Troup School science students — as they learned about designing resilient housing that can withstand strong storms.
Students worked on those designs Wednesday morning in the third-floor classroom of Troup sixth grade science and math educator Ebony Gilliams, known to her students as “Mrs. G.”
Mrs. G tasked the 11 students before her to spend the 45-minute period working on their final projects for the class’s weather and climate systems unit.
In Mrs. G’s class, students learned about regional weather patterns and climate systems. They also researched Hurricane Katrina. They learned about structural damage caused by storms and mud slides, and about the economic impacts of disasters.
Students were required to design a residential or commercial building that included weather-resistant features based on the students’ scientific research. They worked with blueprints that clarified the materials used throughout the structures to help them withstand storms.
After adding their final touches to the blueprints on Wednesday, the students were then asked by Mrs. G to answer “high-leverage questions” for when they presented their projects the following day.
In two-to-three complete sentences, the students explained how their designs would protect against storm damage by wind, rain, and flooding. They also shared what challenges they came across during the design process, and what improvements they would make to their designs in the future.
After explaining the task at hand on Wednesday, Mrs. G checked in with the students by asking, “What questions do we have?” She also checked in with students who missed a class earlier in the week to be sure they were each caught up.
Each student’s blueprint was unique. Some depicted strictures with fire escapes and garages. Others showed solar panels and double-hung windows.
As students filled out note cards answering the project’s written prompts, Mrs. G reminded them, “All group members’ voices should be contributing to the response of the question.”
In one group, sixth-grader Saniya Newby worked with her peers to write what challenges they came across during the process. Newby’s team designed a brick home with solar panels and three double-hung windows. It also had a wooden door and raised foundation supporting a front porch to keep the home dry in case of a flood.
The sturdy brick and windows, she said, would help provide a protective barrier for the home when it comes to strong winds.
She said she learned during the unit the true strength of strong storm winds and floods. She recalled seeing in her research of Hurricane Katrina videos of cars flipped over in high waters. “It taught me that you always have to have supplies to survive, like a med kit and your personal items. You have to be ready,” she said.
Sixth-grader Aiden Norris worked with his class partners Noela and Yaman Wednesday to finalize their design of a brick house with a plywood roof. A metal roof, Aiden said, would easily fly off.
“We never really learn about stuff like this. I like it,” he concluded.
"Specificity" Is The Word
Troup sixth grade science and math educator Ebony Gilliams.
This year is Mrs. G’s second year at Troup, and her seventh year as an educator. Her passion is science education. This year she’s also taken on teaching math to Troup’s sixth graders. She previously taught at Amistad Achievement First Middle School and King Robinson.
Her classroom’s walls are filled with math and science posters. One poster included on one side the power of ten, and on the other quantitative and qualitative data.
Mrs. G aims for her students to learn how to problem solve when presented with real-world problems. She tries to get her students to engage with each other more than with her, to learn how to revisit and modify their ideas and take in suggestions from many.
She noted that many of her current students, who were fifth graders last year, didn’t have a full year of direct certified instruction in several core subjects due to staff vacancies. With the occasional substitute, paraprofessional, or certified teachers who eventually departed, Mrs. G began this year having to catch her students up.
Her class of 11 on Wednesday has also shrunk in size since the start of the school year, which has allowed her to work personally with students.
She sets high linguistic expectations for her students, and focuses on developing their articulation. Her favorite word while teaching is “specificity” to help students speak and write clearly and with purpose.
While checking in on students as they worked Wednesday, Mrs. G read aloud Aiden’s response to his presentation question. The two worked together to see how fluidly his response read. She urged him to answer the second and third parts of the question, asking about not just the biggest challenges the team faced for the project but also about how specifically they overcame the challenges. Aiden explained that his team did research to combat the challenge then went on to write the additional response on his question card.
Despite Mrs. G growing up playing school, she never had an interest in becoming an educator. She emphasized that the great educators she had growing up, particularly her pre-calculus teacher at Eli Whitney Technical High School Latrice James, helped change her life.
During her senior year of high school, she was convinced she wouldn’t apply to college. James encouraged her otherwise. She applied to two schools and attended the University of Bridgeport for her BA and MA. She later took part in the state’s Alternate Route to Certification (ARC) program.
As a first-generation college student, Mrs. G recalled not knowing anything about the college process and having to figure out the difference between subsidized and unsubsidized loans on her own. Her hard-won financial literacy later encouraged her to work with youth in her community to prepare them for their futures.
She was familiar with Troup because her two sons attended its LEAP summer programming. She also wanted to work in a neighborhood school. She added that living in her community as an educator has helped to better engage with her students and their families. She often runs into them at Stop and Shop and other neighborhood stops.
“I model the experiences of some of the educators who have impacted me along the way, and who I want my own children to have,” she said.
Mrs. G emphasized that “they have to receive you to receive any information from you.”