Sitka Science Teacher Earns Award, Praise

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Created on Tuesday, 04 February 2025 15:26

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By SHANNON HAUGLAND
Sentinel Staff Writer
    Sitka High School science teacher Stacy Golden has been given the national Presidential Award for Excellence in Mathematics and Science Teaching.
    The award is one of the highest honors given in the U.S. to teachers of technology, engineering or mathematics, working with kindergarten through 12th grade students.

Sitka High School science teacher Stacy Golden, right, listens as Janet Clarke, Sitka Sound Science Center education director, talks about Golden’s work with students and others on a project to re-articulate a humpback whale skeleton, during a school assembly honoring Golden. A line of students and colleagues took turns sharing anecdotes, giving her flowers and congratulating Golden for recently receiving the Presidential Award for Excellence in Mathematics and Science Teaching. (Sentinel Photo by James Poulson)

    Golden, a longtime Sitka High and Blatchley Middle School science teacher, said she appreciated the awards process as much as the recognition, since it’s helping motivate her to keep doing a good job.
    “It made me re-evaluate a lot of what I do as a teacher, and it’s helped push me to keep going and be better,” she said. “It makes me feel like I have to keep working hard and doing the best I can. That’s why I’m a teacher, and as long as it’s still fun and I keep pushing myself to create new things for the kids, and they’re still having a good time ... I just want to make sure I don’t lose those foundations as a teacher.”
    Former President Biden announced the 336 teachers and mentors for 2021, 2022 and 2023 from around the U.S. recognized for their role in shaping the next generation of scientists, engineers and mathematicians. The National Science Foundation picks the two winners for each state.
    Golden will receive $10,000, and a trip for a week to Washington, D.C., where she will be presented with the award.
    Golden’s colleagues and students say they weren’t surprised to see such a passionate and talented teacher be recognized. She’s known for bringing the outdoors into the classroom, and taking the classes into the outdoors, and encouraging students to engage with the local science community.
    Rep. Rebecca Himschoot, who won the award for elementary science in 2012, said Golden, who taught eighth grade science, provided Himschoot with mentorship and guidance. She said science for Golden is both a vocation and an avocation.
    “Her passion and personal enthusiasm for science shines through, and she inspires kids,” Himschoot said.
    Golden is known to most scientists in town, since she connects students with scientists and projects in agencies and nonprofits involved in science, including the University of Alaska Southeast, the U.S. Forest Service, Fish and Game, and Sitka Sound Science Center.
    Most who know her or have worked with her don’t need much of a prompt to sing her praises. Janet Clarke, SSSC education director, called her “a teacher with a true calling.”
    “Stacy Golden is a community treasure,” Clarke said. “Her creativity, energy and dedication to offering rigorous and relevant education is inspirational for her students and other educators. Her passion for the environment of Southeast Alaska and all things adventurous is the foundation for her classroom. A stranded whale becomes hands-on field experiences for her classes. The Sheldon Jackson hatchery becomes a second classroom for her field science students. Stacy is the real deal.”
    Sitka High senior Aezlynn Nichols took three classes from Golden, and currently is her teaching assistant. She said Golden’s style of teaching is different than others.
    “In her more advanced science classes we’re hardly at our desks,” said Nichols, who plans to pursue a bachelor’s degree in biology and conservation at college next year. “Just about everything we do is hands-on and applicable to real-life situations and scenarios. She always has a smile and isn’t afraid to challenge her students both mentally and physically during class. She’s probably my favorite teacher I’ve ever had.”
    Nichols attributes her interest in her chosen field of study at the university level to Golden’s teaching.
    Golden was born in Akron, Ohio, and was raised around the state, but knew her future lay elsewhere.
    “When I was a little girl, I always told my parents I wanted to live somewhere where I could roll out of the mountains, fall into the ocean and have humpback whales in my backyard,” she said. She described herself as a “whale nerd” and “obsessed about whales and the ocean” from an early age. She lived near a Sea World in Aurora, Ohio, where she would see the orcas; and had an older sister who studied marine biology and showed her the breaching humpbacks at Stellwagen Bank, off of Cape Cod.
    “Everyone else had NSYNC and New Kids on the Block on their bedroom walls, and mine was all about whales and the ocean; I was always obsessed,” Golden said.
    She ended up in Sitka after seeing an ad in Outside magazine for Sheldon Jackson College and saw that her dream of mountains, the ocean and humpback whales could be a reality. “I applied, got accepted and moved here August 8, 1994,” Golden said.
    She flew into Juneau and took the ferry to Sitka. “I’ll never forget coming through Olga, and seeing Sitka, and I was like, that’s it, I’ll never leave; and I’ve been here ever since.”
    She graduated in 1998 with a degree in aquatic science, but had a number of jobs in Sitka and Juneau before finding teaching. She was a naturalist for Allen Marine, and worked at a otolith lab at a Juneau hatchery, volunteered with biologist Jan Straley to identify whale tails, and tutored for Sitka Native Education Program at Sitka High and Pacific High.
    She liked the tutoring work, and others noted her skill in the field and encouraged her to try teaching. Her student teaching was with Cal Hayashi at Blatchley, after a high school teacher thought she worked well with that age group. She spent 15 years teaching science to eighth and sixth graders at BMS. Kent Bovee encouraged her to apply for his high school science teaching job when he retired seven years ago.
    “He had a very outdoorsy passion, and that’s my passion: getting kids out, so it’s worked out perfectly, and rejuvenated me as a teacher,” Golden said.
    She says one reason she enjoys working with high school students is for the opportunities to get them involved with field science. As a member of the Marine Mammal Stranding Network, she responds to calls for necropsies after whales or pinnipeds die. After one of those necropsies, Golden led students in a project to rearticulate a dead one-year-old humpback found near Mountain Point on Kruzof Island.
    One of her current classes includes a snorkeling unit, and she is currently planning a combined marine biology-and-language trip to Belize and Guatemala with SHS Spanish teacher Ariel Starbuck. The science portion with students will include lessons on local ecology, coral gardens and the ecology of the area.
    Other units and classes take students to the science center, where they learn to raise, tag, feed and release the pink and chum salmon; they’ve learned to smoke salmon with a Tlingit elder, and worked with UAS staff on mariculture projects. This semester includes lessons on field research, land otter dissections, and setting fish traps in Eagle River on Kruzof Island, and debris cleanup on Biorka Island.
    Stacy Golden and her husband, Matthew, have a son Scotty, who is a sophomore at Sitka High.