Eddie Taylor
Simeon Career Academy
About
Eddie Taylor, Jr. is a science instructor at Simeon Career Academy. While he enjoys writing, reading, and singing Eddie believes that his mission and purpose in life is to “educate, motivate, and inspire”. This purpose is what lead him to the field of education. Eddie’s approach to education is one that focuses on student voice and student engagement. “Our students come into our rooms with their own stories and experiences which are not to be ignored or discounted,” Eddie says, “but are to instead be used as learning tools and learning opportunities in the classroom”.
Eddie earned his Bachelor of Science degree in animal sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, pursuing a career in veterinary medicine. He “heard the call” after tutoring his young sister-in-law in biology and in response to the Black Lives Matter movement. Eddie explains, “I always said that if I was alive during the days of the Civil Rights Movement, I would have been involved or played a role. Now, here comes another movement and I had to find a way to contribute”. Eddie went back to school and earned his M.Ed. at the University of Illinois at Chicago, where he, his brother, and sister-in-law (not the same one mentioned before) were features in an ABC 7 feature called “Chicago Proud” (http://abc7chicago.com/education/3-members-of-same-family-graduate-from-uic-college-of-education/3462924/)
The topics that Eddie chose to focus on this summer are cancer/cell communication and the water crisis in Flint, Michigan. In both lessons, students will draw from their own intellectual wealth as they investigate and discuss these phenomena. Eddie hopes that his experiences during BEST 2019 will benefit him beyond the upcoming school year and give him insights on how to better engage students in scientific discussion, discovery and inquiry.