Science teacher and department chair Paula Dyer trains her seventh grade students to be risk takers at Mayfield Middle School in Oklahoma City. Using integrated, hands-on lessons and first-hand experiences, Ms. Dyer teaches students how to think through problems and define solutions. To improve reading skills, she collaborated with a language arts resource teacher to integrate reading into the science curriculum. Concerned with the number of zero scores students were receiving, she created Zeroes Aren't Permitted (ZAP), an after-school incentive program that provides resources and extra assistance to underachieving students. Ms. Dyer was instrumental in creating several new school resources, including reorganizing all the school's science equipment so that teachers can check out materials for science projects, and spearheading the construction of a butterfly garden through a grant written by her honors students.
