Mrs. Marsha Brown is a member of the TFA Upper School Science Department. Brown teaches AP, Honors, and College Prep Chemistry courses. She is a passionate, enthusiastic and dedicated teacher who cares deeply about her students.  Mrs. Brown creates engaging, meaningful learning experiences for her students through labs and technology integration. What’s so inspiring about Mrs. Brown? Her willingness to try new technology is remarkable. However, she doesn’t just use technology for technology’s sake, she uses technology to better the learning environment in her classroom.

Since the first day of class this year, Mrs. Brown has been challenging students in her Science classes not only by the labs she conducts, but the projects they create to reinforce her learning objectives. Students in her class are constantly praising how engaging and motivating her classes are. Students do not feel frustrated and are confident using their iPads as tools for learning.

Mrs. Brown continues to add new pieces of technology into her teaching. Technology is fully integrated into her classes to help her Chemistry students. She uses Keynote, PowerPoint, Apple TV and, Educreations, Google Docs, and has developed her Chemistry classes using Canvas. Those are just a few of the examples of technology that she includes into her daily lessons.

Mrs. Brown is always willing to try something new in her classroom. She is a very big fan of the “Flipped Classroom”. She believes that using the technology in a way that allows students to learn quick concepts at home, so when they are in her classroom, they can apply the principles in labs and Chemistry problems. This allows the students to do more chemistry problems and conduct more labs in class so she maximize the learning process.  She is free to move around and can give instant assistance and feedback. In a word, she is a master teacher and a role model for educators everywhere. TFA is proud to have her and we wanted to recognize her efforts and feature her in our Teacher Spotlight.

Mrs. Brown has her Masters of Arts in Secondary Education from Pensacola Christian College and her Masters in Science in Chemistry Education from Louisiana State University. She was inspired to teach Chemistry by her high school teacher Mrs. Gillespie, and is dedicated to continuing professional development. Mrs. Brown exemplifies what it means to be a 21st century educator and The First Academy is proud to Spotlight her.