Tolland's Teacher of the Year Opens Eyes to the Wonders of Science

After one conversation with Tolland’s Teacher of the Year, Carolyn Tyl, her enthusiasm and passion for teaching science are obvious.

“My mantra is, science is everywhere. It’s about helping kids understand why science is important to their lives, to have a deep understanding of things,” Tyl said. “When they start to get the spark, it’s amazing.”

Tyl, who has been teaching as the school district’s science coordinator for seven years and was recently honored at a , strives to help students learn beyond the textbook and experience learning through hands-on experiments.

“What I want to do is immerse kids in it,” Tyl said, explaining that she and her fellow teachers have molded the science curriculum to allow more learning through doing. “We’ve added a lot of inquiry experiments,” she added.

Tyl spends her days traveling around Tolland schools and leading fun classroom activities. For example, in third grade classes, Tyl opened her students’ eyes to soil analysis by digging a 3-foot deep hole that students could crawl into to get a close up look at their subject.

“I used to like big holes as a kid,” Tyl said, revealing how dedicated she is to making her subject fun and interesting for her classes. She said that the kids had a blast climbing in and examining the different layers of soil. The class later went around the school grounds taking core samples of the earth to study in their classroom.

Tyl said that she often leads classes at the kindergarten through eighth-grade level. At the high school level, she said that she focuses on developing curriculum with fellow teachers, who sometimes have a science background themselves and are therefore more comfortable taking such lessons on.

Her most recent project is to assist the school district in meeting new federal standards that focus on application of the sciences. Tyl said the guidelines require more inquiry-based curricula, which Tyl has already implemented through lessons such as her soil activity. The new criteria are meant to stimulate student interest in STEM fields (science, technology, engineering and mathematics.)

While the school system certainly wants Tyl to help the district meet national standards, Superintendent William Guzman said that her fellow teachers nominated her for the Teacher of the Year honor for her passion for teaching and passing on knowledge.

“She’s an excellent teacher and a very student-centered educator,” Guzman said. “She’s very inclusive in her teaching style, whether it’s children or adults.”

For Tyl, the admiration goes both ways.

“Being honored by your peers is the most important honor,” she said of her appreciation for the nomination and for her peers’ work with Tolland students. “It’s a really great school system.”