Chad Lyon M.Ed

Science Educator & Coach

Stratford STEM HS

Nashville, TN

My 8 years at Stratford provided me with many profound and rewarding experiences that led to my growth as an educator, mentor, coach, and community leader.

I was hired at Stratford STEM as a Credit Recovery facilitator for my first teaching job. The class I taught was for students who had failed a class and needed to make up the credit to stay on track to graduate. Although it was challenging, this assignment allowed me to build relationships with students with a wide range of capabilities and needs, and tutor them as well. Most students in this class had IEPs or 504 plans and required various accommodations. For three years, I was able to succeed in this class by working closely with the students' SPED case workers, general education teachers, and parents who were involved. Eventually, I was assigned a role as a graduation coach for a cohort of seniors and juniors, helping increase the graduation rate by 2-3% each year.

Interdisciplinary Science & Research

The 4-year pathway is a partnership with Vanderbilt University's Collaborative for STEM Education and Outreach. The interdisciplinary curriculum for ISR, an honors pathway, is developed, implemented, and revised by a post-doctoral scientist and educator in a co-taught classroom.

Advanced Research: Seniors design, fund, execute, and report findings through independent experimental research. Project examples: cancer research, high altitude weather balloon design and launch, mental health survey of Kurdish immigrants, brain impact in sports, water quality of local watershed.

Citizen Science: The Wolbachia Project is a collaboration with Vanderbilt to collect and analyze insects that carry Wolbachia. Insect DNA is collected and analyzed and the findings are added to a national database to improve the reduction of infectious disease through vectors.

Environmental Science: Cooper Creek Water Quality Study investigated local tributaries for pathogens, experiments for water purification were carried out to reduce fecal coliform.

A junior in ISR 3 presents an example of how survey design can lead to bias. Our goal was to replicate a previous experiment and test for the effect of a psychological phenomenon called anchoring.

Competitions

ISR Symposium

One of ISR’s primary goals was to develop confidence in our young researchers through preparation and intentional practice. Of course winning was a goal, but the most important thing was growth and learning within the student.

5 Alive! Video Challenge

The Real Pods (2019)

2nd Place $300

Collaborations

Enhanced Graphics

Sports Posters, Curriculum Posters & Digital Media

Academy Virtual Tour

The purpose of this collaboration was to provide a tour of the ASE Academy to students and families that are considering the academy. The Academy Principal, teachers and myself created this virtual tour on Adobe Spark. We were in the midst of a hybrid learning environment and needed an effective way to showcase the academy pathways. The virtual tour was shared to the community stakeholders during a webinar style presentation. Adobe Spark (now Adobe Express) was a great tool to introduce web design to students but was limited in creating in-depth user journey.

Engineering

BIOSTEM

Community

"I strongly believe that by investing my time, energy, and creativity into building a more connected community, we can all come together to achieve great things. There's something truly special about working towards a common goal with others, and I'm excited to be a part of that journey.”