Her Story
Caryn Long’s love of space began in the fourth grade in Ohio, when Senator John Glenn answered a letter she wrote for an extra-credit assignment. That moment taught her the power of role models, and she has built her teaching around bringing working scientists into her classroom. She earned a bachelor’s degree in elementary education from Queens University of Charlotte in 1988, a master’s from UNC Charlotte in 1990, and a Ph.D. in educational technology from Oklahoma State University in 2015.
She taught 3rd through 6th grade in Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools from 1988 to 2004. She then spent 13 years with NASA Education, first as an Albert Einstein Distinguished Educator Fellow starting the NASA Explorer Schools program, and then as the manager of NASA’s Digital Learning Network, a team of educators at all ten NASA centers who brought live programming to schools. She returned to the classroom in 2017, teaching 4th and 5th grade at Treadway Elementary, and since 2019 has taught 6th-grade science at Montverde Academy, where she now directs educational technology and innovation. A former student, now a parent, recalls her fourth-grade classroom as the place that sparked her wonder in the stars.
Beyond the Classroom
Long’s work with NASA’s GLOBE program has her sixth graders making daily ground-truth observations of clouds and contrails and reporting them to NASA scientists. During the 2020 school closures her students kept submitting data every day. The program drew an invitation to NASA Langley’s Millionth Satellite Match event, and one of her students later spoke about Florida’s sustainability efforts at an international GLOBE conference. She coaches the middle school LEGO robotics team, which won its regional competition in its first year, and her program helped build the school’s upper school robotics team.
At Montverde she took over the STEM Student Academic Concentration program, which let students choose biomedical, computer science, chemistry, engineering or sustainability tracks and grew membership 30% in a year. Each senior completes a research “Apex” project, a small-scale dissertation published in the school’s research magazine. She also helped plan the school’s new Center for Educational Innovation and Technology. Earlier, a $5,000 Eleanor Roosevelt Teacher Fellowship helped her start an all-girls STEM club. Her honors also include a 2000 Presidential Award for Excellence in Mathematics and Science Teaching, a 2019 Air Force Association state STEM teacher award, and a 2019 Space Education Ambassador award.
Philosophy Into Practice
Long has no textbooks in her classroom, because science changes too fast. Students work in teams that are rearranged every seven weeks, dance to music to move complex ideas into long-term memory, and use Merge Cubes and augmented reality to hold the water cycle and the layers of the Earth in their hands. She designs every lesson with the 5E model and checks for misconceptions throughout, and students show what they know through projects, songs, drama or traditional tests.
When schools closed in spring 2020 she had a week to move online. She drew on her NASA lessons and had former NASA colleagues join as virtual guests. When students’ cameras went off, she added interactive tools such as Nearpod and Flipgrid, which let students demonstrate the scale of the solar system. She says that she could not be sure every student was learning until the summative assessments, and that fact weighed on her.
“What you will not see are students sitting passively.”Dr. Caryn Long
In Her Own Words
“Teaching is truly an art.”Dr. Caryn Long
“I approach educating students with two goals in mind; 1.) My students should love learning more than they did in previous years and 2.) improve their overall attitude about learning.”Dr. Caryn Long
“I’ve often described my classroom as controlled chaos.”Dr. Caryn Long
What Others Said
“She believes that every student is special and deserves to enjoy education.”Randolph Long, nominator
“Dr. Long specializes in igniting passion for science within her students and then creating opportunities for them to make a scientific impact – on a global scale.”Rachel E. Adams, Ed.D., head of school and former administrator
“She is uplifting our school community and changing the lives of our students.”David Bernatavitz, assistant head of school, Montverde Academy
“Ms. (Smith) Long certainly made a lasting impact on me and that is the definition of a true hall of fame educator.”Caroline Thornton, former fourth-grade student