As a new teacher, Allen Samples can’t stop thinking about doors that are wide open.
“Knowing the doors that teachers can open for students makes me feel really excited,” says Samples. “I look at my sixth grade students and think, ‘One day, you are going to thank me. It might not be today, but before you know it, you’ll be graduating and I can’t wait to celebrate that with you.’”
Remembering his own mid-year move to St. Louis as a seventh grader, Samples met a man who would turn out to be his favorite teacher and door-opener.
“Mr. Shepherd pushed me to be in advanced courses. He helped me get exposure to other schools around that were the best fit. It really helped me. He even came to my high school graduation,” he said. “Science has always been my strong suit. I participated in summer STEM programs, but never thought I had what it took to be a teacher until I attended a career fair at Harris Stowe State University. I jumped at the chance to lift up the community where I went to school as a child.”
Samples also credits his teaching colleagues for lending the support he needed during his first year teaching science at Westview Middle School in the Riverview Gardens School District. He dove into the back of his own closet to pull out LEGO sets, something he knew his students would find appealing. But something else happened during his first year in the classroom that made him even more excited for a second year and beyond.
Westview Middle School was collaborating with WashU’s Institute for School Partnership (ISP) through the STEM Integration Program, giving Samples and his peers an opportunity to collectively learn even more about integrating science, technology, engineering and math with reading, social studies and other subjects in their school. Armed with a lot of LEGO pieces and a newfound, wider content lens, Samples and his students dove into a topic that would prove timely: understanding natural disasters, specifically earthquakes and tsunamis.
“Even though our students live in the Midwest, far from oceans and plate boundary lines, they do live near a very active fault zone,” says Samples. “It is essential that they learn about challenges people face around the world and here at home. By engaging them in real-world, hands-on STEM experiences, we not only teach science, but also build confidence, resilience, and a belief that their ideas and skills can have a global impact. My desire is that my students see themselves as global citizens as well as citizens of their local communities.”
Samples and his sixth graders took a deep dive into preparedness, identifying items needed for emergency kits and they even explored related career paths, including seismologists and other experts from disaster services organizations like FEMA and the Red Cross.
The class did a LEGO Home Design Challenge, giving students an opportunity to research how buildings are affected by natural disasters. Using LEGO bricks and engineering principles, they designed and built model homes intended to withstand simulated disasters. Students tested the strength and stability of their homes by mimicking earthquake tremors and tsunami wave impact.
Little did Samples and his students know how close to home a natural disaster would hit. There was no earthquake or tsunami, but tornadoes ravaged the St. Louis area on May 15, 2025.
Before the storm, Samples was invited to share the project in the ISP’s Educator Showcase held on May 7, 2025 at WashU’s Danforth Campus, joining 20+ regional educators discussing and sharing posters demonstrating how they are using methods from action research to shape their instructional practice and create opportunities designed to benefit all students.
“I’m really grateful to not only showcase my own work, but also to uplift our entire district by representing us on a stage that we’re not often invited to. This was an opportunity to show St. Louis that my district does have good things going, and we are proud to be persevering. It also opens my eyes to different professional opportunities for myself. Why not be the teacher representing my school or my profession? Seeing yourself as a leader among your teaching peers is a baton that I would like to start passing.”
Allen Samples, Teacher, Westview Middle School
Encouraging possibility
Lanesha McPherson teaches eighth grade science at Brittany Woods Middle School in University City. With more than 20 years of classroom experience, she has participated in professional development through other ISP programs, but the Educator Showcase was a new experience for her last year. She’s a fan.
McPherson and her colleague, Chyna Jones, share the responsibility of teaching science to the school’s eighth graders, using mySci, a comprehensive, high-quality, kit-based curriculum adopted by 265+ schools across the St. Louis region. The eighth-grade curriculum requires students to analyze and justify their thinking in writing.
“Our eighth graders represent a full range of students, including those whose primary language is English and a growing population of multilingual learners, all of whom have proficiencies in reading and writing that range from struggling to advanced,” says McPherson. “Focusing our research on discovering what is the ‘right’ amount and kind of scaffolding that supports student ownership in scientific writing was important. Our goal is to help students become more independent learners and critical thinkers, specifically in scientific explanatory writing through claims, evidence and reasoning.”
Throughout the academic year, the two teachers researched the topic together, with support from the ISP.
“The ISP team was really great helping us through the research process. We’re already doing the work. This just elevates what we do. Presenting our poster during the showcase just validated the research experience. Presenting the data and our process in a professional setting was a moment of pride for the work we’re doing. We talked to community members from our district, and the conversations shed a different light on what they thought was happening compared with what was actually happening in our school and using data to show it. By the end of the year, we were already talking about how to apply what we learned for the next year. The level of expectation we have for students is definitely higher as a result of this work. We know they will rise to it, and we have the data to prove it.”
Expanding the meaning of leadership
Encouraging educators to see themselves as professionals in the classroom and beyond is baked into the ISP cake.
“Our district partners–teachers, coaches and administrators– are the experts when it comes to their learning communities,” says ISP Executive Director Victoria May. “They have a desire to continuously improve their practice by engaging as researchers themselves. This teacher-led research greatly enhances our collective efforts to facilitate successful learning for all students.”
That end game– sharing discoveries that have the potential to impact all learning communities and students–was front and center July 23-25, 2025, when eight ISP Showcase participants accepted an invitation to share their research with a broader national audience at an annual forum co-hosted by the ISP and the National Network for Education Research-Practice Partnerships (NNERPP) on WashU’s Danforth Campus.
Action research is well underway for the 2026 Showcase, set for May 5 at WashU’s Danforth Campus, but the ISP’s approach to partnership and providing leadership opportunities to teachers beyond the classroom is evident throughout programs in other ways as well, including curriculum development.
Teachers as experts
If you want a classroom resource that meets the mark for teachers, why not ask them for critical input at the front end of the development? At the ISP, that model is business as usual, especially when it comes to designing and refining curriculum. That refining is an ongoing process of iteration that aims to keep the content relevant, standards-aligned, and accessible for teachers and their students. A seventh version of the K-5 curriculum is being developed and the final five units will be released in Fall 2026.
ISP Instructional Specialist Heather Milo is leading the revision efforts for mySci’s 6-8 units. For two years, she’s been counting on seasoned mySci teachers to pilot a seventh version of some of the units and provide essential feedback, as well as storylining new middle school units.
“When we started outlining new units, we said, ‘Let’s get a solid cadre of teachers who are still in the classroom, have a deep understanding of Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), and are diverse in who they serve,’” Milo says. “I’ve really been impressed. The teachers we’re partnering with know what the research says and they are trying to put it into practice. They are also incredibly passionate about learning activities that are both engaging and aligned with performance expectations.”
One of those teachers is Emily Williamson. She’s been teaching middle school science for 18 years, with the last eleven at Brentwood Middle School, where she started using the mySci curriculum.
“I really like that it’s so investigative,” says Williamson. “It’s a great way to learn science, starting with phenomena. I really like the ease of using it. The whole kit system works brilliantly, in my mind. It’s not a text book and it’s engaging. Teaching so many subjects–so overwhelming. It really puts away a hurdle that an inexperienced teacher would have.”
Williamson was invited to support two weeks worth of unit revisions in 2024 and 2025.
“This summer, having teachers looking at it through different lenses was really helpful. It gives you an appreciation that these documents are really even-evolving,” she says. “This was my first chance to take a stab at curriculum writing, and I really love it.”
Carl Carlson is one of two middle school science teachers at KIPP Inspire. He joined the ISP over the summer to help rewrite some of the curriculum. Specifically, he lended expertise to support new storylining for units on Space and Ecosystems.
“Being in a room with other people who understand how something should be taught and all have different ideas about that was super refreshing,” says Carlson. “Everyone had really good ideas about what they wanted to use for the phenomenon. I ended up being the person who tried to make sure we stayed connected to the big picture.”
At the beginning of the 2025-2026 year, Carlson said he noticed the impact of being part of the curriculum-writing process.
“It really helped me re-examine what to focus on,” he says. “Already, I’ve done a better job this year focusing on the science and engineering practices.These are the things that kids’ brains should be doing while they are doing science.”
A wow factor for students AND teachers
Teaching science to middle school students excites Ellie Gund, who was among the mySci teachers pulled into the revisions process for mySci units on Space and Ecosystems. She’s particularly excited to have worked with the team to identify more than one appropriate anchoring phenomenon for each unit, eliminating what “phenomenon fatigue” that teachers and students can experience if they revisit the same anchoring phenomenon over and over again throughout a unit.
Kids are learning things every day, encountering ideas and questions they’ve never experienced before, so it’s not that hard to ‘wow’ them, but you don’t always know exactly what’s new and different for students at this age. says Gund, who engages with upwards of 135 seventh graders each day at Ritenour Middle School. “But I do know that it can be hard to keep their attention for a very long time. If we have shorter phenomena for the units, it’s so much better for middle schoolers’ way of thinking about the world. It just makes them feel better and more confident about learning science.”
For Gund, being invited to help steer the development of curriculum that she and other teachers will be using just feels right.
This has been one of the most fulfilling experiences. It’s so useful to be in the room with other people who are knowledgeable about science curriculum and to talk about our different experiences while we help make a resource really exciting for students.
Ellie Gund, Seventh Grade Teacher, Ritenour Middle School
Harnessing the know-how and passion that teachers bring adds the most value to the ISP’s work, says Executive Director Victoria May.
“Across classrooms, showcases, and curriculum design tables, one throughline remains constant: teachers are leading the way. When educators are empowered as experts, researchers, and innovators, their students benefit the most.”
