Assistant head of the science faculty at Green Bay High School in West Auckland, Collins spends most days invoking curiosity in her students, inviting them to wonder at the world around them.
“Today, for example, I was teaching our Year 10s about the periodic table, but I was teaching it in a way that was showing how genius it is, and how amazing it was that it had been figured out at the time it had, when we didn’t even understand atomic structure,” Collins says.
“I was getting so excited about how clever the periodic table is and the kids were actually laughing at me, in a kind way,” she admits.
While students might sometimes chuckle at Collins’ unbridled enthusiasm for science, it certainly doesn’t go unnoticed, and Collins has recently been announced 2023 winner of the prestigious Prime Minister’s Science Teacher Prize.
Collins says the accolade still feels a bit “unreal”, but she’s grateful for the recognition it brings her subject area, Green Bay High School, and the teaching profession.
“It’s one of those things, you just go and do your job every day, you enjoy it and you try to do your best, and then to get acknowledged for it is just amazing really.”
Collins is a big fan of the 5Es instructional model for science learning, guiding students to engage, explore, explain, elaborate and evaluate.
She says in science education, it’s important not to assume that all students have had a life experience they can bring to the learning.
“What I try to do is bring everybody up to the same anchoring point through that initial engagement,” Collins says.
“So, making sure that we give them that experience first in the classroom, in a fun and hands-on way, so they can notice the behaviour of something, what it looks like, how it reacts, its properties – so then every student in the class has got that foundation of experience and understanding.”
From there, she says, it’s all about connecting science content with something students find relevant and fun.
“Teaching senior chemistry equilibrium recently, we made ice cream, because that was a really good way for them to see the equilibrium involved in melting ice,” Collins says.
In another scenario, Collins found an opportunity to engage her gym-obsessed students in some chemistry learning, examining the list of ingredients found in their nutritional supplements.
Collins is also noted for bringing science out of the textbook and into the real world.
Last year, as part of a study of microorganisms, students were taken to explore the different lichens growing in various places within the school and local community.
“That grew into looking at how they are indicators of air pollutants and then connecting with scientists that can actually measure the amount of heavy metals in them,” Collins says.
This led to a trip all the way down to Dunedin, to work with scientists on further testing, learning about how we can monitor air pollutants through these living things.
Now in her third year working at Green Bay High School, Collins may be fairly new to the staff, but not to the school community.
“My children came here, so I avoided working here until they had graduated,” she says.
“But I’ve been a fan of the school for a while.”
Now, she is relishing the opportunity to work in what she says is an amazing, forward-thinking workplace.
“We’ve got this really great team of staff across the school with really good open leadership that allows us to thrive,” Collins says.
“And then our science department is a little reflection of that too.
“Our head of faculty is super forward-thinking, curious, wanting to make science engaging and fun, really open to letting teachers be autonomous and bring their ideas forward.
“And we’re really collaborative, so it’s a really fun place to work.”
In addition to Collins’ $50,000 prize, the school will receive $100,000 to put towards further developing science at the kura.
Collins believes that when it’s taught well, and features throughout primary and secondary school, science is a subject that can create truly democratically capable citizens.
“It teaches us about the world around us and how it works,” she says.
“It teaches us about finding out new knowledge and questioning knowledge that’s given to us, being critical thinkers."
These skills, Collins says, are vital for people to make informed decisions during election years, when designing better cities or tackling climate change, just to name a few scenarios.
“So that’s what’s driven a lot of my work over the last 15 years, is the idea of growing democratically capable citizens through good science programs.”
