Biomedical Sciences Teacher Ellie Vandiver will leave UC High this year to work for Project Lead the Way (PLTW), “a national nonprofit organization that focuses on STEM education,” according to Vandiver. PLTW organized the Biomedical Sciences Program that Vandiver taught at UC High, according to the PLTW website (pltw.org).
“They [PLTW] offered me a position with them as Director of School Engagement for the state of California, so I’m going to be taking that position because I really believe in what they do. I can reach a lot of students here [at UC High], but I can reach more students if I’m in a bigger position,” said Vandiver. In her new job that will start in late June this year, Vandiver will “be dealing with school districts all across the state to try and have them see the relevance and the rigorous curriculum of PLTW to try to get districts involved in putting this curriculum in their schools.”
Before Vandiver became a teacher, she worked as a nurse in Michigan. “I worked as a nurse in the ICU off and on for about ten years,” said Vandiver. “I loved nursing.” Vandiver said that as a nurse, teaching came naturally to her. “A lot of nursing is teaching. I found I was really good at teaching,” said Vandiver.
Vandiver taught anatomy for six years at a school in Michigan and then at Crawford High before coming to UC High in 2009 to start the Biomedical Science program. “The other principal, Mike Price, had heard about the program and I was teaching at Crawford, but he asked me if I would be interested in starting this [Biomed] program,” explained Vandiver. “I jumped on it because I saw how great a curriculum it was. I wouldn’t teach anything else,” she added.
The Biomed program has expanded under Vandiver. “I think the first senior class I had was only like 15 [students] …every year it got bigger and bigger, so it’s been a lot of fun watching it grow like this,” said Vandiver. “Right now, I have 40 seniors in my senior class, which is huge…Next year, we’re going to split the seniors up into two separate classes because next year, I’ll have 50 seniors. We’re also opening up another Principles of Biomedical Sciences class.”
“The most important thing I’ve learned [as a teacher],” said Vandiver, “is the impact a good teacher can have on students and how important it is that we as teachers are done –we should be done– with worksheets, and packets, and everything else because that is not the way we need to teach this new generation coming in. We need to be interactive; we need to be in their [students’] faces, looking at them, working with them all the time, not lecturing for fifty minutes in a class.” The Biomed “curriculum keeps them thinking creatively using imagination and thinking skills that are so important for the new world, for the new twenty-first century, and Common Core standards,” added Vandiver.
Vandiver also promoted teamwork in her class. “To me, the most important thing is that they [students] learn to work in groups; they learn how to be collaborative,” said Vandiver. “Nobody works alone in the real world. If there were conflicts, we always resolved them so that everybody could work together.”
“Having the students from ninth, tenth, eleventh, and twelfth, you develop these really core, strong, personal relationships with the students. When I leave this year, it’s going to be very, very hard for me because I love these kids and they’ve impacted my life greatly,” said Vandiver. “I’m going to miss all the staff here. I think the support I’ve gotten from UC High School has been amazing.”
“I’m very sad. She’s such an excellent teacher,” said Biomed Teacher Chris Walker. “I’m also very excited because I know what an awesome opportunity it is and how many people she’s going to help out.”
Vandiver said that her most memorable moment at UC High was when she was named Teacher of the Year for the district in 2012. Vandiver said, “Mr. Olivero, my sister, and others had worked to get every student that I had ever taught in the media center, and I had no idea. I walked in, and everyone said, ‘surprise.’ That’s really one thing I’ll take with me forever.”