Potomac School Teacher Awarded Educational Leadership Award

From The Potomac School:

The JASON Project has honored Mary Cahill, science teacher and Intermediate School academic dean at The Potomac School, with its 2016 Education Leadership Award. Formerly a division of the National Geographic Society, the JASON Project (named for the mythical hero-explorer who captained the Argo) designs curriculum for K-12 inquiry-based STEM education, promoting learning “that mimics what scientists are doing in the field,” Cahill says. In a career spanning 35 years (28 of them at Potomac), Mary Cahill has become a master teacher and an advocate for inquiry-based learning in the sciences. She has served as a consultant for National Geographic since 1994, training teachers in Canada, Japan, and throughout the United States to effectively use various curricula produced by that organization and its affiliates, including the JASON Project, Crittercam, Giant Traveling Maps, and Geography Action. National Geographic has filmed Cahill’s science lessons at Potomac as examples of best practices in teaching, and she taught a master class entitled “Exploring Your World with National Geographic” at the Chautauqua Institute in 2009. In addition, Cahill has worked with the National Science Resource Center's Biodiversity Academy since 2006.

At Potomac, Mary Cahill partners with the Chesapeake Bay Foundation to offer her students unique and exciting learning opportunities. Under her direction, 6th graders learn about an urban watershed through hands-on experiences at the Potomac and Anacostia Rivers; 7th graders participate in an ecological restoration project involving underwater grass beds (they grow the grass from seed at school then transplant it along the lower Potomac); and 8th graders spend three full days on a remote island in the Bay, working as “watermen” and “waterwomen” and learning about the connections between the Bay, its watershed, and broader environmental issues. She says, “The opportunity to have our students experience one of the most biologically productive estuaries in the world is a real treasure. When students mirror the kinds of research scientists are doing in the field, they see that they too can make a difference.”

Cahill is a National Board Certified teacher; she has received a Woodrow Wilson Teaching Fellowship (1994), a Fulbright Fellowship to Japan (1997), and a Grosvenor Fellowship for travel to the Arctic Ocean (2009). Her undergraduate degree, in biology, is from Regis College, and she earned a master’s degree in science education at Boston

Photo Courtesy of The Potomac School