Stephanie Brushway - Denver Public Schools

Stephanie, from the moment she stepped into a district-level leadership role a few years ago, has tirelessly worked to use her position to influence changes in how students in our large, urban district experience classroom science. Ms. Brushway is committed to increasing instructional minutes in science, especially in K-8 grades (Denver is not unique in our struggle to compete for adequate science instructional minutes at the elementary and middle-school levels). Prior to joining central-office administration in Denver as a Science Curriculum & Instructional Specialist, Stephanie was a teacher leader, teaching middle-school science and driving reform ideas from within her department. Her successes as a teacher leader informed her practice within a new district-leadership role.

To help convince school leaders to increase instructional minutes for science at their schools, Stephanie thought it would be powerful if they could, from one location, see how their schools compared with others. She wanted leaders to be able to compare metrics like school size, student demographics, comprehensive schedule (minutes per content per day), science curriculum use, and state assessment performance. Her idea was that if school leaders or members of instructional leadership teams could quickly access these (and other) concisely-communicated data points, there would be a collective move toward increasing instructional minutes for science; and it might even promote cross-site collaborations.

Stephanie set out to design and build a website to serve as a dashboard to school leaders so they could access all of that information. It has also supported our Science Curriculum & Instruction team with difficult conversations about providing students instructional minutes for science. When we can quickly access school data, comparable in whatever ways are important to the leader, and show how the differences in student outcomes almost always correlate with the number of instructional minutes provided in the elementary levels, it is hard for leaders not to make that happen for students. Sometimes just seeing that other schools actually have science in their schedule is enough to convince a leader to do the same.

We are early in the push for more K-8 science instructional time using this approach, but it has already yielded change at a handful of elementary schools this academic year. They now provide students with science instructional time, called out by name on their comprehensive calendars. Thousands of students (at a minimum) are now, and every year forward, getting more access to classroom science experiences than they were 18 months ago. The way Stephanie influenced that system-level change is the epitome of what successful and spotlightable science leadership should be. Most district, region, state, or national leaders were, at one time on their journey, an amazing classroom or school-level leader, making deep differences in individual students’ lives. As we trade that deep impact for broader influence within a system, we must figure out how to make scalable impacts for students. Stephanie has shown us all we can make those scalable, system-level changes and influence the lives of all our students. I’m impressed with Ms. Brushway’s impact and proud to work alongside her every day.

The best advice Stehanie ever received as a science education leader was to “Lead how you teach: see the end goal, break it down into steps, and then work to guide others there on their own path.” The advice she gives hungry science leaders today is “Lead the best you can each day and continue to seek out new information and skills so your best is always better than the day before.”

Submitted by:  Douglas A. Watkins Manager K-12 Science Curriculum & Instruction, Denver Public Schools