Ed Wren

After a two-year graduate stint working with fish endocrinology in Antarctica and Maine, I realized that a career in research science was not for me.  What has become my 18 year classroom teaching career appeared in my life first in the form of fifth and sixth grade science in a private school in New York City.  Those years showed me I had found a calling. My need for more advanced science moved me on to 11 years of NYC Public High School, teaching a range of sciences from Freshman Research to Chemistry.   9 years of teaching AP Environmental Science has been, by far, the most rewarding and exciting teaching I have ever done.  It has not necessarily brought me the daily hysterical laughter I would get from teaching 5th and 6th grade, but teaching this course showed me how thoughtful, and deeply committed to their learning, students can be. Every day I saw what it looked like for kids to be excited about their learning.  Granted my enthusiasm and some jumping around like a lunatic helped. So, I still love doing experiments and reading about all the exciting environmental research being done, especially if it involves marine conservation, but I would now prefer to use the experiments and research as tools to help students connect to learning about the environment.