Earth Science Regents Bootcamp

• LOCATION: CUNY City College of NY campus in the North Academic Center building, located at 137th St. and Amsterdam Ave., Manhattan
• DATE & TIME: Tuesday, July 21 - Friday, July 24, 2026, 9am - 3pm daily.
• LED BY: Kristina Coker and Liza Blackman (bios below)
• CTLE AVAILABLE: 24
• THIS WORKSHOP IS FOR: NY Earth Science Regents teachers

Now that the revised NY State Earth Science Regents labs and exam have been in place for two school years, with three new labs and a new literacy component for the exam, it’s time to assess and reflect on how you can best prepare your students and utilize existing and new resources. This bootcamp-style workshop is designed to help you improve your teaching and understanding of these changes. Building on strategies, structures, and lessons learned, we will explore active learning strategies to deepen your students’ understanding of crucial conceptual models and help you effectively implement a student-centered, NGSS and NYS Regents-aligned approach tailored to physical science education.

Led by expert and experienced Earth Science teachers, you’ll walk away with ideas, overviews, specific actionable strategies, field trip ideas, and more! We are revising our lab workshops with the following in mind over 4 days this summer:

• Day 1 will focus on the three science investigations. We will start with an overview of the labs and have stations set up with the materials for all 3. Then we look at how we can implement the labs to be most successful in our classroom spaces.
• Day 2 will focus on problems of practice, or grievances. We will be focusing on identifying areas that need some troubleshooting for the investigations, curriculum development and implementation, new literacy demands, and any other topics you would like to discuss.
• Day 3 will focus on building solutions to our grievances. We will use the time to discuss solutions and have time to plan for their implementation. We will discuss curriculum pacing, utilizing tools to support us in generating cluster question and utilizing literacy strategies in our classrooms to prepare our students for the increased literacy demands of the exam.
• Day 4 will focus on taking ourselves on a field trip to have a learning experience outside the classroom environment. We will think about how this trip connects to our curriculum and can be used to enrich our students' learning. Details to come.

Join us and help your students make the most of exciting opportunities to learn about the Earth, Earth systems, the Solar System, and more!

Kristina Coker is going into her 10th year of teaching Earth Science at Midwood High School in Brooklyn. She is a Math for America Master Teacher and Mentor Teacher for the MAT program at the American Museum of Natural History. Kristina enjoys developing new dynamic elective classes, like Space Engineers and advising the Dungeons and Dragons club at her school.

Liza Backman is going into her 9th year of teaching high school science, and her 5th year of teaching at the Urban Assembly Institute of Math and Science for Young Women (UAI). She earned her B.A. in Chemistry and Geology from the College of Wooster, her M.A.T. in Earth Science Education from the Richard Gilder Graduate School at the American Museum of Natural History, an advanced certificate in Teaching Students with Disabilities from Relay Graduate School of Education, and holds additional NYS teaching certifications in Chemistry and Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages. As the current Science Instructional Lead at UAI, Liza is passionate about the importance of building teacher collaboration to navigate ever-changing curricula, student needs, and pedagogy.

is celebrating 15 years! Since 2011, we have delivered professional development workshops for teachers, by teachers, about teaching. We are an approved CTLE and NYCPS MTAC vendor. All workshops over 2hrs offer CTLE. Below is some important information, but please see our official on our website for full details and policies.

Pricing: workshop/event pricing reflects a desire to offer affordable professional learning experiences. Some workshops are subsidized and offered at a discount or for free. Some workshops include extra materials costs. Often, there is both a “Full Price” ticket for people who can pay full price and for schools/organizations paying for their staff to attend, and a “Teacher Price” ticket for teachers/educators paying out of pocket. If price is a barrier to your participation, please keep reading for several options.

CUNY & other partner campus pre-service students: If you are training to be a teacher, we want to welcome you to attend our workshops for free! Please email [email protected] for details and to see if you qualify.

Want to pay by invoice or purchase order? We encourage you to ask your school or organization if this is a possibility. Please see the for the process, which includes a template letter with messaging geared towards administrators.

Are there discounts available? Often, yes!

• Discounted Early Bird and “Teacher Price” tickets are often available.
• Each summer, the Wanninkhof Excellence in Teaching Scholarship provides up to 2 free workshops per teacher in TItle 1 or similar schools.
• Specials and discounts are announced on our social media (@STEMteachersNYC on Instagram, LinkedIn, Bluesky, and Facebook), and in our Weekly Newsletter – sign up here.
• We partner with several organizations and CUNY to offer free tickets to teachers and pre-service teachers involved.
• If at any time price is a barrier to you purchasing a ticket, please contact us at [email protected]

Refunds, cancellations, and other registration/ticketing policies or changes: Please see the full for details and policies.

Please note: We take screenshots, photographs and record video of our workshops in order to publicize a positive image of science teaching, and of STEMteachersNYC – a recognized 501(c)(3) non-profit organization – and to support future teacher leaders. If you register, you are agreeing to be photographed and to have your voice and image video-recorded. You are also agreeing to relinquish all your rights to the photographs and video recordings.

If you do not wish to be photographed or video-recorded – you must inform us before the workshop starts. For in-person workshops, we may take one photograph of your face so that we can erase your image if we happen to catch it by chance during the workshop, and we will do our best to avoid you.

Have more questions? Please see the full for further details and policies, or contact us directly:

• Registration or ticketing questions - [email protected]
• Questions about invoice/PO issues - [email protected]
• Any other questions - [email protected]

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