Nancy Spillane
National Science Foundation
Division of Research on Learning, Presidential Award for Excellence in Mathematics and Science Teaching (PAEMST)
Connecticut – Grade 12, Chemistry, Life Science, and Physical Science
Nancy Spillane has been a science teacher at The Williams School, a small independent day school in New London CT for twelve years. She has taught upper school Chemistry, in addition to middle school Life Science and Physical Science. For the past three years, she served as the Science Department Head. She has also worked extensively as the Volunteer Program Coordinator and volunteer science teacher in the elementary schools in her town. She has lived and taught in six states: both on the east and west coasts, and in Hawaii.
Spillane is dedicated to classroom teaching. She says, “Students learn by doing and by applying what they learn to the world around them: by making connections between scientific theory and practice”. She has worked within the context of the traditional chemistry classroom to integrate experiences from the atmospheric, oceanographic, space, and materials sciences, and to establish connections with paleontology, microbiology and genetics. To acquire a better grasp of nuclear science as well as the human side of scientific research, her students have read, interpreted, and performed the play Copenhagen by Michael Frayn, experiencing the lives of Bohr and Heisenberg as they worked cooperatively and independently to understand the workings of the atom. To relate properties of substances to their chemical make-up, her students have written Materials Science Storybooks for younger children, putting difficult concepts into simple terms. They have composed songs about chemical principles, created biome travel advertisements, built compound machines performing useful tasks, and designed three-dimensional models of organelles and invertebrates.
Spillane earned a B.S. in Chemistry and a M.Ed. in Teacher Education from the University of Vermont. She was recognized for Teacher Excellence through The Brian J. Carey Award, and was awarded grants and scholarships for travel and academic study from the Ford Foundation, Pfizer Inc., and the Siemens Foundation. She has twice been recognized with a Groton Friend Education Award for Volunteer efforts in the local public schools.
Spillane is spending her Fellowship year with the National Science Foundation in the Division of Research on Learning in Formal and Informal Settings where she has been assigned to work with the Presidential Awards for Excellence in Math and Science Teaching Program and the DR K-12 Program.