ABSTRACT
Recent reforms in science education—embodied in the Next Generation Science Standards—are genuinely exciting for people like the author who see science as a way to understand the world. Often, school science is portrayed and experienced as the controlled delivery of facts, but this new vision puts real world phenomena, scientific practices and students’ thinking at the core of learning scientific concepts. Good teachers know that they are autonomous professionals who draw upon the wisdom of practice, research, and their colleagues and are capable of making thousands of decisions each day to meet the learning needs of their students. They regularly wrestle with the meaning of public education in a democracy. Many science-minded individuals who have let their interests and talents take them in other directions for a first career often find the second career of teaching immensely satisfying, even when it is difficult.
