Rickey Torrence’s METEOR Program Experience
Greetings, my name is Rickey Torrence and I am in my 24th year of teaching science at the high school level. For the last five years I have been contemplating my post-teaching options and working in the medical or clinical setting has always been appealing to me. I was familiar with the METEOR program since several of my students had completed it, and several members of the METEOR staff had served as judges in my school’s science fair. I applied to the program because I was able to combine both my current and future endeavors (education and the clinical/medical field) while also pursuing a graduate certificate in teaching. I have always been driven by the pursuit of higher education, and the opportunity to do all of these things at once was exciting. While enrolled in the METEOR program I was able to take several graduate courses aimed at improving my understanding and application of STEM teaching techniques. While each course offered a slightly different perspective on how this would look in my classroom, the common theme was that each course allowed me to apply what I learned in real time in my classes. I studied and designed STEM projects, improved my assessments, and was able to evaluate how these changes improved both my instruction and student retention of the content.
My summer research project was two-fold, as I was able to divide my time between two teams. The first was a clinical trial collecting a great amount of data on children and their allergies. This data was expansive and will one day help clinicians provide better care to families in need of support. Speaking of support, the families that participated in these trials were given several different types of support, including food vouchers, transportation support, information on allergens, access to support groups, and events and parties for the young people to commune with other individuals who were similarly impacted by aggressive allergies. The second project focused on childhood diabetes and the team I worked with was creating and testing methods to help manage symptoms in kids without relying on medication.
The METEOR program is a great way for teachers to access opportunities outside of the classroom that are more intentional and useful than most Professional Development. It creates a bridge between the classroom and professional opportunities for teachers outside of education but still connected tangentially to the field. I am honored to have completed the program, improved my activities and assessments, experienced how research looks in a clinical setting, and earned my Graduate Certificate in STEM Teaching! Thank you to everyone at Children’s National, GW, and the METEOR Program, who helped make this program impactful for me and my students.
