Math is FigureOutAble
Ratios, proportion and measurement is all figureoutable as students learn to use their reasoning skills. Students use what they know to figure out what they don't know. Students argue with data, not with worksheets.
Chimacum, WashingtonEst. 1991 · Room 410 of 6th graders
6th Grade Math · Science · STEM Robotics
Al Gonzalezteaches kids tobuild the answer.
National Board Certified Teacher, Early Adolescent Generalist. Thirty-four years of guiding eleven-year-olds into engineers, field scientists, mathematicians, and curious humans.
- 34
- Years teaching
- 28
- Years in Chimacum
- 6th
- Grade, all in
- National
- Board certified
What happens in Room 410
A real STEM experience, not a STEM poster on the wall.
Science in the field
Watersheds, salmon, soil and shoreline — the Olympic Peninsula is the lab. Kids collect real samples, log real numbers and defend real conclusions right from our neighborhood creek, Chimacum Creek. Students don't just learn about environmental stewardship, they practice and become environmental stewards.
STEM Robbotics 101
The STEM Robotics 101 curriculum, made to be fully adaptable by the teacher, works with Lego Mindstorms EV3 robots to help students learn Science, in our case physical science. Build, test, fail, iterate, document, repeat.
Recognition
2021
NCCE Outstanding Technology Educator of the Year
Recognized for putting classroom technology in the hands of students and training teachers to do the same. Using the tools needed to succeed in today's world and making sure students are preparing for THEIR futures. That includes weaving AI literacy into existing curricula to help guide students in learning how to use, and when not to use, AI.
2022
EPA Presidential Innovation Award for Environmental Educators
Regional recipient, for environmental science work rooted in the local watershed and community. The Environmental Stewardship Project, combined with Ocean Guardian School work, provides students real-world experience with environmental science and climate change.
Who I am
Alfonso "Al" Gonzalez
I teach 6th grade Math and Science at Chimacum Elementary School, where a STEM robotics curriculum and an environmental stewardship project combine with powerful math instruction provide all students powerful hands-on, minds-on learning experiences. Twenty-eight of my thirty-four years in the classroom have been here in Chimacum.
I share what works and what fails — openly, in public. I write, stream and record because teaching gets better when it's out in the open, and because the students deserve someone still learning alongside them. That is what drives me to present at conferences and co-facilitate teacher trainings on STEM aligned strategies such as gamification and game-based learning, specifically using Minecraft Education, running an esports program, and learning best practices with AI including how to weave AI literacy into existing lessons and units and learning which tools to use to do what is best for AI to do while making sure the human always does what is best for the human to do.
Curiosity is the curriculum. Everything else is scaffolding.