NHS senior receives WyTeach award

Avery Chick
NLJ Intern
 
Toby Johnson, a senior at Newcastle High School, has a reputation for being among the most talented students in the entire state in the realm of science. That talent is why he was recently given the WyTeach Award — and it would seem to be the perfect fit for Johnson, whose teachers say he has ambitions to be a classroom teacher. 
Johnson already lists accomplishments at the state level in science fairs. This includes his placing first in the entire state in behavioral sciences, being awarded a certificate for excellent research from the American Psychological Association and WEST Inc.’s special award for environmental and data science, as well as being the state’s alternate qualifier for ISEF, which is the national science fair competition or the “International Science and Engineering Fair.” Being so successful at the state
and national level through science fair, Johnson’s teachers have expressed that he is a perfect candidate for the WyTeach Award.
“The award is to recognize excellence in those who are planning on going into teaching,” James Stith said. 
“The competition had a lot of phases, but Toby had to submit lesson plans, teach a lesson to AI children and then answer questions in front of a panel of experts regarding how he structured his lesson, how it fit into a unit and addressed standards and how he planned to assess the students informally and formally through the unit if he were to teach it,” Stith explained.
For his lesson, Johnson decided to focus on how cancer occurs, what causes it, and how it’s treated, all from a biological standpoint. Johnson described the process of the competition as, “Any high school student planning to study education in a Wyoming college was able to compete in the first phase, and from there only the top 12 students advanced to the second phase, and from there only the top 6 proceeded to the final phase.”
Overall, he needed to show he had a strong grasp of teaching strategies and general pedagogy (teaching methods), Stith said.  “I think that his success in the competition shows he will be a great addition to a science department’s staff in a few, short years.”
Being a senior, Johnson’s plans for include attending University of Wyoming to study secondary education, biology, and chemistry, while also competing on their debate team. Johnson would also like to continue his research on the effectiveness of teaching and assessment methods.