Walker News Archive
Walker School's Emily Adams chosen top teacher
MARIETTA - Walker School Biology teacher Emily Adams has been named Georgia's Biology Teacher of the Year for her work with high school students.
The National Association of Biology Teachers selects one teacher in each state who works in either public or private schools. Last month it picked Ms. Adams for Georgia.
"She deserves it," said Walker school sophomore Sam Wetstone, who Ms. Adams taught last year. "I think she's a very good teacher. A lot of times we have discussions in the class and she gets everyone involved."
In her sixth year of teaching, 28-year-old Ms. Adams, who earned bachelor's and master's degrees from Emory University, began teaching seventh-grade biology at Campbell Middle School in Smyrna in 2001. She transferred to Walker in 2004 for several reasons.
One was a lack of resources at Campbell, which is on the "needs improvement" list for failing to meet requirements of the federal No Child Left Behind Act.
While she taught science at Campbell Middle, Ms. Adams was given an budget of only $150 to spend on such items as microscope slides and consumables needed to conduct lab courses with 120 kids a year.
"We were really strapped for resources," she said. "I don't want to know how much money I spent each year."
At The Walker School, she doesn't have to dig into her own pockets for school supplies, and also can get to know her students better.
She has only 80 students at the private Walker school.
The challenge of teaching high school biology today, she said, is not becoming overwhelmed by the subject.
"There's so much to teach in biology that you can get caught up in the details," Ms. Adams said.
Subjects such as evolution and stem cell therapy also can upset parents of students, she said.
At Walker, she hasn't had any problems with controversial subjects like evolution, but she still remembers being forced by the Cobb school board to paste evolution disclaimers in her science textbooks while at Campbell.
"It's very nice having textbooks that don't have stickers in them," she said.
Her secret to teaching is relevancy. "The biggest thing I do is try to make it as relevant as possible," she said.
So, when her class discusses cell biology, she talks about brain damage and schizophrenia, which usually occurs in people by the time they are teens. Or the class discusses bio-terrorism, and undergoes bio-terrorism simulations.
Ms. Adams attributes her success to her mother, Sue Krauss, a hospital X-ray technician in New Mexico, and her grandmother, Wanda Gibson, who taught first grade during the Great Depression and now lives near Emory University.
"They are both strong, Southern women. Those two women raised me to believe you can do anything," she said.
Ms. Adams is bound for Albuquerque in October to receive her award.
"I just ran around the house when I found out about it," she said.
Located north of the Big Chicken on Cobb Parkway, the Walker School is a nonsectarian, independent college preparatory day school, with 1,072 students from pre-kindergarten to grade 12.
By Jon Gillooly
Marietta Daily Journal Staff Writer
jgillooly@mdjonline.com
Used with permission.
http://www.mdjonline.com/articles/2006/08/25/89/10229188.txt
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