Instructional Practice
Who Am I?
by Dishelesh Josey
© 2025 Dishelesh Josey
Who Am I?
I am a seed planted by Mother Earth,
in soil rich in minerals—
transplanted by turbulent winds and storms,
a sign of her discontent.
Replanted in red dirt,
in soils untouched by human hands, discarded and forgotten—
yet, as the rose grows in concrete cities,
so do I.
My mother once said, “She has been in school for years.” Although she was unable to complete high school in the small southern town of Woodbury, Georgia, she labored for years in the city before being dismissed following the onset of dementia. Long drives between concrete cities and a one‑room shack in rural Georgia became formative learning experiences, shaping an early understanding of how place, movement, and memory influence growth and opportunity.
This poem opens the instructional practice narrative because it frames learning as something shaped by environments, systems, displacement, and care. Students, like seeds, do not grow in isolation; their development is shaped by the conditions intentionally designed—relationships, structures, expectations, and opportunities to make meaning. Instructional practice is therefore guided by a leadership philosophy grounded in Culturally and Historically Responsive Education (CHRE), which centers on identity, skill, intellect, criticality, and joy as essential conditions for student learning. These commitments inform the design of phenomenon based, three-dimensional science instruction that prioritizes student sensemaking, discourse, and evidence based reasoning. This domain illustrates how these beliefs are enacted through intentional instructional planning, varied instructional strategies, and the integration of formative and summative assessment to support equitable science learning.
Early in my teaching, I relied on delivering information through transactional models of instruction—what Paulo Freire describes as the “banking model” of education (Freire, 2018). Over time, I came to understand teaching as the intentional design of environments that allow students to engage, question, and grow together. As Bettina Love reminds me, joy, mattering, and justice are not extras in education; they are central to how students experience learning and possibility (Love, 2019). These elements shape how I design instruction, facilitate discourse, embed assessment, and enact equity throughout my classroom practice.
Artifact 1: Greenhouse Innovation Unit demonstrates instructional design that centers phenomena, student sensemaking, and three-dimensional learning. The unit is anchored in the guiding question, “Why does a greenhouse heat differently than the air around it?”
This question invites students to investigate observable events and construct explanations using evidence. Instruction is sequenced to support students in planning investigations, collecting, and analyzing data, constructing models, and developing explanations using Claim-Evidence-Reasoning (CER). Core science ideas related to energy transfer—radiation, conduction, and convection—are explored through hands-on testing of soil, water, and air temperatures. Crosscutting concepts such as systems and energy flow help students connect patterns in their data to system level explanations. These same principles of phenomenon-based instruction, student sensemaking, and evidence based reasoning are reinforced in aviation weather instruction, where students apply scientific ideas to real-world decision-making contexts.
Artifact 2: Phenomena Concept Map supported the intentional scaffolding of student thinking across lessons by making relationships among phenomena, core ideas, and crosscutting concepts visible. While these tools informed lesson sequencing and coherence, the Greenhouse Innovation Unit serves as the primary evidence of instructional design. Together these artifacts show how content, inquiry, and relevance are integrated to promote deep learning rather than isolated skill practice. I wanted learning to feel connected rather than compartmentalized, so I integrated reading, writing, mathematics, and technology throughout instruction. Students write explanations, create graphs, and use digital tools such as PhET simulations when appropriate to explore ideas and test their thinking. These practices help students explain their reasoning and see science as something they actively work through rather than memorization.
Artifact 3: Talk Science Primer Reflection demonstrates that science talk is central to this process, with studentsasking questions, sharing ideas, and building on one another’s thinking in pairs, small groups, and whole-class discussions. These conversations make science feel real and collaborative and allow students to learn from one another. I am continuing to develop my ability to guide productive talk by modeling norms for respectful listening and by using simple, consistent prompts such as, “Can you say more?”, “Do you agree or disagree—and why?”, and “What’s your evidence?”. These discourse moves support precise academic language and keep students’ thinking grounded in the phenomenon under investigation.
Artifact 4: Cause‑and‑Effect Systems Graphic Organizer was implemented as an instructional strategy to support students in tracing how changes within interconnected systems lead to observable environmental and human impacts. Many students live several miles away from the city, yet they regularly see and experience airplanes flying overhead, making aviation a familiar entry point for scientific thinking. The graphic organizer connected students lived experiences to scientific concepts by helping students organize information about systems, patterns, and cause‑and‑effect relationships. By using aviation and climate‑related examples, such as weather patterns and environmental change, students were better able to make sense of complex scientific ideas through structured visual supports.
This spring, I read the book Teaching Science to Every Child: Using Culture as a Starting Point, which explains how learning theories shape instruction in different ways for different groups of learners. Settlage et al. (2018) explain Piaget’s theory of cognitive development as emphasizing learning through maturation and developmental readiness, which helps explain why some students benefit from independent exploration when they are ready to engage with ideas. In contrast, Settlage et al. (2018) describe Vygotsky’s theory of the Zone of Proximal Development as viewing learning as a social process that occurs through interaction, guidance, and shared meaning‑making. This perspective is especially important because it recognizes that culture and experience influence how students learn. Social constructivist approaches build on this idea by designing learning experiences where students work with others, receiving support, and developing more complex thinking rather than learning in isolation (Settlage et al., 2018).
Artifact 5: Instructional Video captures a METAR decoding lesson and provides evidence of student sensemaking through instructional strategies, productive discourse, and embedded formative assessment using a real‑world aviation context. The lesson was intentionally designed to support students’ understanding of complex informational structures through collaborative learning, visual supports, and formative assessment. Students worked in groups of four to five to reconstruct a scrambled METAR report using color‑coded notecards representing individual report elements, including station identifier, date and time, wind, visibility, sky condition, temperature/dew point, altimeter setting, and remarks. The first five minutes of the video document the introduction of the task and expectations, after which students engage in sustained discussion, negotiation, and revision as they justify the placement of each METAR component. The continued use of the notecards on the following instructional day allowed students to revisit and sequence the report with increasing accuracy and independence, providing multiple opportunities for formative assessment. This artifact demonstrates the use of multimodal instructional strategies, structured collaboration, and embedded assessment to promote conceptual understanding rather than memorization, illustrating how instructional decisions were aligned to authentic scientific practices and real‑world application.
During a TKES observation on March 30, 2026, the administrator noted specific moments that reflected how instruction unfolded during the lesson. As written in the observation feedback, “The teacher intentionally activated prior knowledge by reviewing what students learned last week and modeling what happened during the plane crash example. The teacher used purposeful questioning to promote analysis and critical thinking (e.g., ‘Raise your hand when you can identify 3 things in this picture’ and ‘Can you tell me about the weather just from looking at this picture?’). The teacher guided students to recognize the importance of evidence‑based conclusions by explaining the need to reference reports rather than conclusions by assumptions. Students were actively engaged through movement to different locations, reinforcing the lesson’s real‑world connection to listening and attention.” Reading this feedback helped me see how students were engaging with evidence, discussion, and movement as part of making sense of ideas rather than simply receiving information.
Across instructional strategies, instruction is guided by the CHRE pursuits of identity, intellect, skill, criticality, and joy. Heat transfer concepts are intentionally connected to students lived experiences, including clothing choices, home heating and cooling systems, car interiors, and cooking traditions. These everyday connections open space for students to recognize science in their own lives and extend naturally to local justice issues such as food deserts and energy costs. Framing science this way helps students see learning as relevant to their communities rather than distant or abstract. As Muhammad and Williams remind us, equity involves more than access or rigor alone; it requires attention to who students are and how they experience learning.
In practice, instructional strategies are designed to affirm identity while supporting deep intellectual work. Simulations and digital modeling function as tools for learning rather than gatekeeping, and design tasks—such as building solar ovens and testing insulation prototypes—create opportunities for students to see their ideas and communities reflected in the work. Across the unit, identity is affirmed, intellect develops through sustained inquiry, skills are strengthened through data analysis, and critical thinking emerges through conversations about access, sustainability, and joy. Supporting instructional materials, including aviatrix posters and an autism spectrum disorder case study, further reflect a commitment to equity in classroom design, representation, and access for all learners.
Assessments are embedded throughout instruction and function as a core component of the learning process rather than a final evaluative event. Each day includes formative assessments such as mini‑CERs, observation charts, and safety checks during investigations. This approach treats assessment as guidance rather than judgment and focuses on students’ sensemaking. Each lesson returns to the anchoring question: “Why does a greenhouse heat differently than the air around it?” This helps keep learning focused and purposeful.
During the early lessons, students share CER statements, compare data representations, and construct energy pathway models that illustrate how radiation, absorption, conduction, and convection interact within a system. In the later lessons, students apply their learning to design decisions, synthesize findings in presentations, complete a mastery quiz, and reflect on connections between science, sustainability, and equity.
Artifact 6: Solar Eclipse One‑Pager documents student synthesis through work samples that integrate scientific evidence, explanations, and reflection, demonstrating students’ ability to connect scientific phenomena to cultural relevance and personal meaning. This instructional approach emphasizes evidence‑based reasoning rather than memorization. Students use data to solve problems, think critically about energy efficiency, and consider how scientific knowledge informs decisions that affect their communities. Student outcomes from this unit will inform the next instructional sequence focused on local weather patterns and microclimates. Previously constructed graphs and models framed unequal heating as a driver of atmospheric circulation, and students will investigate albedo and urban heat islands using the same inquiry practices and equity‑centered discourse structures. I will continue to prioritize support for bilingual learners, use multimodal assessment practices, and create opportunities for students to engage in meaningful science across all disciplines.
More broadly, I remain committed to connecting scientific understanding to community humanness through both science and aerospace education. Aviation offers a powerful context for exploring systems, energy transfer, and decision‑making under changing conditions, mirroring how students learn to navigate complex environments. School gardens, greenhouses, and flight‑based investigations serve as living laboratories where science becomes a practice of inquiry and care. Who Am I? opens my instructional practice because it captures how I understand learning as something shaped by environments, systems, displacement, and care.
References
Freire, P. (2018). Pedagogy of the oppressed (50th anniversary ed.). Bloomsbury Academic.
Love, B. L. (2019). We want to do more than survive: Abolitionist teaching and the pursuit of educational freedom. Beacon Press.
Michaels, S., & O’Connor, C. (2012). Talk science primer. TERC. https://inquiryproject.terc.edu/shared/pd/TalkScience_Primer.pdf
Muhammad, G., & Williams, P. (2023). Unearthing joy: A guide to culturally and historically responsive teaching and learning. Scholastic.
Settlage, J., Southerland, S. A., Smetana, L. K., & Lottero‑Perdue, P. S. (2018). Teaching science to every child: Using culture as a starting point (3rd ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315652511
