Her Story
June Teisan teaches seventh grade science at Harper Woods Secondary School, a grades 7–12 building in a small Detroit-area district. She asks whether a student would rather learn chemistry from a textbook or study pH and water quality while sailing on an 84-foot schooner on one of the Great Lakes, and she plans her classes accordingly. Her students build and launch model rockets in a grant-funded “RocketMath!” unit that draws in the math, social studies and English teachers, and they study the science and math in the artwork at the Detroit Institute of Arts.
Her labs are “managed chaos,” with 25 to 35 students working in different directions with the equipment real scientists use, and “virtually no off-task behavior.” She sings goofy off-key songs to the tune of Adele’s “Hello” or Dora the Explorer, pulls numbers from a beaker for chair-number prizes, and at the end of every year invites her students to evaluate her. She promises not to read their evaluations until her gradebook is closed.
Hers is always the room with hot cocoa, music and a warm welcome two hours before the first bell and long after the last, with a menagerie of live animals, Lego robotics kits and microscope stations. A parent remembered handwritten notes about her son’s progress arriving in the mail, in place of form letters. Her colleagues credit her with writing grants that bring thousands of dollars of programs to the district.
Beyond the Classroom
Teisan was the 2007–08 Michigan Teacher of the Year and a finalist for 2008 National Teacher of the Year. She received the 2005 Presidential Award for Excellence in Mathematics and Science Teaching and National Board Certification in 2002, and she served as a 2014–15 Albert Einstein Distinguished Educator Fellow in Washington, D.C., in the offices of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. She is past president of the Network of Michigan Educators.
With grants and partners such as the EPA and Sea Grant, her students have built and deployed water-quality data buoys, and they teach “lake lessons” to the district’s elementary students. Her after-school SWIM Team, the Student Water Quality Initiative in Michigan, has won science competitions with prize checks of $800 to $1,200. She chairs the Education Working Group of GLOBE, the NASA- and NSF-sponsored international science program, leads an advisory panel for the National Science Teachers Association’s middle school journal and works with the Smithsonian on lessons. She also helped start a STEAM summer institute at the Detroit Institute of Arts for urban and suburban teachers.
Philosophy Into Practice
Teisan says that “each child is precious,” and that she wants her actions to “align with that reality.” She hopes students leave her room as legitimate scientists who see themselves as able to solve real environmental problems, which she believes is especially important for urban students who have little access to the shorelines and wetlands of a Great Lakes state.
She argues that “educational quality should not be dependent on zip code.” She says that when a measure becomes a target, it stops being a good measure: “We’ll never test kids to greatness, but we can certainly teach kids to greatness.” She pushes for new technology in schools with outdated computers and asks teachers to speak up in the policy debate.
“Teach as if no one is testing.”June Teisan
In Her Own Words
“I wholeheartedly believe that each child is precious and I want my actions to align with that reality.”June Teisan
“We’ll never test kids to greatness, but we can certainly teach kids to greatness.”June Teisan
“Educational quality should not be dependent on zip code.”June Teisan
What Others Said
“June Teisan is dynamic, compassionate, and accomplished!”Deborah Cornelison, nominator, 2013 NTHF inductee
“Mrs. Teisan has brought vibrant, inquiry-based STEM studies to life for thousands of students in the Detroit metro-area.”Mike Flanagan, Michigan State Superintendent of Public Instruction
“June is an advocate and an ambassador.”Rick Joseph, Michigan Teacher of the Year 2016
“June has a track record of pulling in colleagues across curricular areas and grade levels to devise unique programs for our shared students.”Sheree Burns, social studies teacher, Harper Woods Middle School
“I genuinely and readily admit that I have never been more immediately impressed with another educator in all my life.”Peter R. Newman, principal and former Harper Woods colleague
“To me the true measure of Mrs. Teisan’s teaching is that my son, now a high honor roll senior in high school, plans on pursuing a study in the sciences.”Paige Drabant, parent of a former student