Why I Created Life as We Know It

I never really planned on creating teaching resources for other teachers.

I started making them because I needed them myself.

I've spent the past seven years teaching high school science, including Biology, Anatomy & Physiology, Zoology, Forensic Science, and Health. I've also spent six years teaching college-level courses in Anthropology and college success. My bachelor's and master's degrees are in Biological Anthropology, so science (and especially the life sciences) has always been a big part of who I am as an educator.

But somewhere along the way, I realized that my real passion wasn't just what I was teaching. It was figuring out how to teach it better.

That interest eventually led me to earn a doctorate in education and develop a particular passion for curriculum and instructional design. I love taking a concept that students struggle with and asking: How can I make this more approachable without taking away the challenge? What skills do students actually need to understand this? And how can I create something a teacher can realistically use in a classroom?

From My Classroom to Yours

Most of the resources you see here started because I needed something for my own students.

Like a lot of teachers, especially when I first started teaching, I spent countless hours searching for resources, modifying things I found, or creating something from scratch because nothing quite fit what I needed.

Over time, I built more and more of my own materials. Eventually, I decided to start sharing them in the hope that they could save another teacher some of that time.

Because teaching is already hard enough. We shouldn't all have to reinvent the wheel every Sunday night.

What I Want Students to Take With Them

I'm passionate about life science, but I also know that most of my students aren't going to become scientists.

That's okay.

I want them to leave my classroom with skills they can actually use. I want them to know how to make sense of a graph, work through an unfamiliar scientific term, pull evidence from something they read, question a scientific claim, and use information to make a reasonable conclusion.

At the same time, I want them to see that science is interesting.

The life sciences are about life as we know it: our bodies, other organisms, our environment, our evolution, our health, and the world around us. Students may not remember every vocabulary word we teach them, but I hope they leave our classrooms a little more curious about that world and a little better prepared to understand it.

I'm Still Learning, Too

Having degrees and years of experience doesn't mean I have teaching completely figured out.

I don't.

I've taught lessons that worked beautifully and lessons I would never teach the same way again. I've created activities I loved and then changed them after watching actual students try to complete them.

I think that's part of being an educator.

We should always be learning, adjusting, questioning what we're doing, and looking for ways to do it better. The resources I create are influenced by my education and experience, but they're also influenced by what I continue to learn from research, other educators, and my own students.

That's also why I created this blog. I want it to be a place where I can share resources, explore current research in science education, and talk about practical ways we can bring those ideas into real classrooms.

Why Life as We Know It Exists

Ultimately, Life as We Know It is about making teachers' lives a little easier while helping students develop skills that extend beyond a single science class.

I want to create the kinds of resources I wish I had when I first started teaching: approachable, meaningful, visually engaging, academically worthwhile, and ready to actually use.

I'm still learning. I'm still creating. And I'm still figuring out better ways to teach science.

Hopefully, sharing some of what I learn along the way can make another teacher's job just a little bit easier.