Sitka High School teacher Stacy Golden received a prestigious teaching award last month. The Presidential Award for Excellence in Mathematics and Science Teaching is given to about 100 teachers around the country each year. KCAW’s Meredith Redick stopped in on one of Golden’s marine biology classes to see the veteran educator in action.
On a rainy February afternoon, the wind is blowing 27 knots down at Sitka’s Thomsen Harbor. Sitka High School teacher Stacy Golden is surrounded by students on the dock, intently prodding a metal plate covered in gelatinous worms.
“It’s just full of worms,” one student marvels.
These worms are part of Golden’s marine biology class, an elective for upperclassmen. Today, students are identifying the invertebrate species living on metal plates in the harbor – from spiny urchins to velvety marine sponges. The plates are here as part of a collaboration between University of Alaska – Southeast and the Sitka Sound Science Center. They were initially intended to help monitor an invasive sea squirt known as D. vex, or “sea vomit tunicate.” Turns out, the plates are also a great way to monitor biodiversity in the harbor.
Seniors Eve Estes and Hayla Trigg are perched on one end of the dock, armed with laminated guides and a smartphone equipped with a tiny microscope. Estes evaluates their plate.
“We have some mussels and a lot of tube worms and sea urchins and red algae — and what is this called again?” she says, pointing to an unassuming cone-shaped creature. “A limpet?”
Her partner, senior Hayla Trigg, peers at the plate and nods.
Estes considers the limpet. “Yeah,” she says. “It’s kind of cool.”
Estes says she’s taking marine biology to get hands-on experience, and because it’s just fun.
“I think that we’re really lucky to get to leave our classroom and get outside a lot more often than other kids,” she says.
Earlier this year, the class went snorkeling in Sitka Sound. She and Trigg both say that was a highlight, despite the chilly temperatures.
“We went at Magic Island, and by the science center,” Trigg says as she tallies another type of worm on her notepad. Estes looks up from the plate, where she’s been watching the snake-like arms of a brittle star flail. “And out by the Coast Guard!” she adds. “And we get to, like, collect data and measure turban snails and look at what’s down in the water.”
These kinds of unconventional lessons are a big part of Golden’s classroom approach. Golden has been teaching in Sitka for 22 years, mostly at Blatchley Middle School and Sitka High School. Outside of marine biology, she teaches field science, applied science, and freshman biology.
Golden says she structures all of her classes to help kids build the tools – and the motivation – to get out and see the world with a new perspective.
“I think especially for the ocean, we all see it every day, but a lot of times we don’t realize quite everything that’s down there,” she says. “And for a lot of the kids, what’s really fun about this is they’ve seen salmon, they’ve seen humpbacks, they’ve seen herring, but they haven’t seen, like, this plethora of worms and the plethora of chitons and all these things that they had no idea were right here in our harbors.”
In field science, students help to raise and spawn hatchery salmon. In marine biology this year, students have helped with marine mammal necropsies and reassembled parts of a humpback whale skeleton that washed up near Sitka in 2023.
Sitka High School principal Laura Rogers says she wasn’t surprised to learn that Golden won the national award. She says Golden takes her students seriously – and that helps students rise to the challenge.
“She treats high school and even middle school students as young people who are on a path to adulthood,” Rogers says. “So they take her class much more seriously, because she’s always careful to make sure that they understand that what they’re learning in class is going to also apply to them in real life.”
She says Golden finds creative ways to make science relevant – whether she’s collecting genetic material from sled dogs in Anchorage or planning a field trip to Central America in collaboration with the Spanish teacher.
“She has all these hugely innovative ideas about how to make science both exciting but also accessible and real-world for her students, so they don’t see it as something that people do in a laboratory,” she says. “I think her students learn to view science as something that they see in front of them every day, and she believes that they’re all civilian scientists.”
Golden says she’s honored to get the award, but wants to share the credit with her students and the Sitka community.
“I talk to other teachers from other places, and even with this age group, you couldn’t do things like this necessarily with kids all over — but our kids are fantastic,” she says. “So it’s kind of neat just to be recognized for having amazing kids in an amazing community that supports education, and just having a great job.”
Back at the harbor, Golden’s civilian scientists are shivering in the rain — but their excitement hasn’t waned. A group has gathered over one particularly novel plate, exulting in their latest discovery:
“There’s a crab in here!”
Golden bends over to examine the plate and confirms that there is, indeed, a small kelp crab scuttling among the worms. The students look triumphant.
And although she’s 22 years into her career, Golden is still celebrating along with them.
