Wayne County Master Science Teacher Fellowship (MSTF)

MSTF Roadmap

• Apply for Fellowship
  • Understand eligibility and commitment to MSTF
  • Complete online application
  • Complete personal statement
  • Submit commitment form
• Years 1–3: Building Instructional Practice
  • Build community and instructional practice through reflection
  • Deepen science content and pedagogical knowledge
  • Participate in workshops, job‑embedded professional development, and coaching
  • Engage with mentors and peers as critical friends
• Year 2: Developing Mentorship Skills
  • Learn and apply practices for teacher mentors
  • Cultivate learning‑focused relationships and conversations
  • Promote mentee reflective practice
  • Foster equitable thinking, practices, and outcomes
• Year 3: Action Research
  • Focus on and complete Action Research
  • Share Fellowship and classroom story

MSTF Micro-Credential System Outline

Learning Experiences

MSTF learning experiences consist of workshops, job-embedded professional learning through Classroom Learning Labs, Studio Days, and individualized coaching cycles, book studies, and Fellowship meeting discourses with peer Fellows as critical friends in reflection.

Micro-Credential

A micro-credential captures and communicates that an individual has reached a level of applied proficiency in the standards by satisfactorily applying their learning based on a defined rubric.

MSTF Certification

To earn the MSTF certification, a Fellow must complete the 4 core MSTF micro-credentials that demonstrate proficiency in applying skill sets in a classroom environment. Fellows will provide final evidence through an action research project that will demonstrate the Fellows capacity to implement high leverage and ambitious science teaching practices with students through reflective inquiry.

Micro-Credential Badges

	Great teaching can be learned. The Ambitious Science Educator will anchor instruction with puzzling phenomena, engage groups of students and the whole class in discourse to get students thinking deeply with each other publicly, and wrap investigations in science practices to support students in the practice of sensemaking.
	Assessment should be meaningful and actionable. Fellows will become assessment literate, develop a theory of classroom assessment, build their classroom assessment microsystem, and use actionable data to grow students, resources, and practice.
	Fellows will study the art and science of being a reflective practitioner. Using tools, protocols and routines, the Fellows will continually reflect on classroom practices that include pedagogy, assessment, and collaboration.
	Leaders are those that empower others. Fellows will work to empower others in mentorship and discourse to make a difference in their classrooms, districts and communities.

Fellowship meetings are held monthly.

Meetings will be held both virtually and face to face. Fellows come together to learn, share and grow.

Fellows leading Fellows

At the core of the Fellowship meetings are teaching Fellows sharing their work and experience with their peers.

Learning both in content and Practice

Fellowship meetings will provide an opportunity to grow in content knowledge and awareness, explore connections across science disciplines and considerations for classroom implementation.

Learning from others

Opportunities to engage with and learn from others in the fields of science and education.

Summer workshops 

4-day workshop experiences

GOAL

Opportunity for MSTF Fellows to experience in-depth, professional thinking and learning around the craft of teaching within a collaborative community.

Coaching/Planning Conversation Prior to Classroom Learning Lab

• The Classroom Learning Lab Facilitator arranges for a prep/planning/coaching conversation prior to the lab day.
• The Learning Lab Facilitator helps the host teacher focus the lesson that exemplifies the target behaviors and the identified goal

Pre-Observation Conversation – Pre-brief

• Welcome – FacilitatorHost Teacher shares their intentions for teaching the lesson, student learning, and also the pre-observation work that students may have had.
• Network guests select individual focus intentions for the CLL Observation – share with group and host teacher.
• Host teacher leaves to prepare students for the day.
• Guests review observation and note-taking format using the Classroom Learning Lab Observation form.
• Norms on Classroom Learning Lab form – Review and set an intention for yourself – share with a partner.
• Silence cell phones and move to the classroom.

Observation

• Try to stand off to the side or back of the room. Be prepared to shift quietly as needed.
• Share a rotation of 3 people moving about the classroom to capture student / teacher evidence.
• Keep track of evidence of student learning and the craft of teaching. Jot down questions you might have.

Post-Observation Conversation – Debrief 

Each participant writes down what they noticed and wondered about on the Guest Reflection form, Host teacher completes the Host Reflection form.

Studio Days

Developed at the University of Washington and the Ambitious Science Teaching Project, Studio Days are a form of job-embedded professional development that takes place during a school day. School teams develop a vision of “what is possible” in instruction and to take principled risks with practices.

Multiple role-actors (classroom teachers, coaches, administrators, and researchers) collaborate to provide real-time feedback within current lessons. Although Studio Days feature a wide variety of science content, the goal of each science studio day is the same: to support students in improving explanations, models, and arguments of scientific phenomena. Prior to the studio, the MSTF advisor and mentor will facilitate a planning meeting with teachers from a school to design a unit of instruction and lessons for the following studio day. On the day of the studio, teachers and others attending studio days engage in multiple rounds of co-planning, co-teaching, and co-debriefing.

Instructional Coaching/Impact Cycles

Fellows will work with their advisor/mentor through multiple cycles of learning, action, and reflection to shift and improve classroom instruction to more closely align with the MSTF Standards of Practice and with students’ abilities to engage in 3-dimensional sensemaking of phenomena.