Fort science teacher creates ‘spark’ with TikTok

By Kim McDarison   

Surrounded by beakers and burners, periodic table charts, and other sundry science class necessities, veteran science teacher of 37 years, Chick Westby, is bringing Fort Atkinson High School science curriculum to a new audience: TikTok. 

Challenged by his son to explore the medium by making one short video a day, Westby said he was skeptical at first, but on Sept. 1, the first day of class this school year, he found himself handing his cell phone to a student in one of his freshmen science sections, and the rest, as they say, is, well, science. 

Attraction to science

A longtime resident of Wisconsin, Westby said he grew up, one of four siblings, in Lodi, north of Madison. 

“I grew up in a family that fixed stuff,” Westby said, noting that his father was born in 1935, and grew up during a time when people chose to fix things rather than immediately buy something new. It was a philosophy his dad passed onto his children, Westby added. 

Westby said he began fixing things with his father when he was of grade-school age. 

“I just like figuring things out. I like seeing why things do what they do. You can kind of explain most everything with chemistry and physics. That’s what drew me to those two sciences,” Westby said, adding that he and his siblings all learned from their father about the benefit of creating things and working with their hands.  

While in school, Westby said, he toyed for a while with the concept of becoming a pharmacist, but opted instead to give biology a try. As a science major, he said, a logical step was teaching. He graduated in 1984, with a bachelor’s degree in education, biology and chemistry, from the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire. 

After graduation, he said, he set out to explore the world. Drawn to athletics and triathlons, he moved to California and began teaching middle school science. In 1987, he said, he found he missed home, and returned to Wisconsin, and, after a short period of substitute teaching in Waunakee, he began teaching science in Prairie du Chien. It was there, he recalled, that he found his niche. 

“From Day 1, teaching physical science in Prairie du Chien, I though: ‘this is the way to go. This is a subject I was made for,’” he said.  

Ten years later, he said, after he and his wife, Kim, started a family — today the couple has two adult children — another career change brought them to Fort Atkinson. Westby was hired as a science teacher in the district’s middle school, he said. 

As the children grew, in 2002, Kim, too, made a move back to work, finding her place as a music teacher, serving two of the district’s elementary schools. Today, Kim works as a librarian at Luther Elementary School, the couple said. 

Also in 2002, Westby began teaching high school science, he said. He began teaching physics to upperclassmen. Teaching physics to freshmen came later, he noted.

A room with a view

Since his arrival at the high school, Westby said, he has enjoyed the consistency of working from “the same room and the same chair,” he said, and while his chair might be the same, his view from it is not. 

“The expectation of the scientific community has changed a little bit as far as what physics kids should know across the board,” Westby said.  

High school curriculum and requirements changed over the years. In time, he added, he found himself teaching electronics, physical science and chemistry. 

As a district, Westby said, there was a strong belief that freshmen students should have a base knowledge of science and physics. 

Today, Fort Atkinson High School students take at least one semester of each science: physics, chemistry, biology, and earth science, which, Westby said, focuses on climate science and cycles. 

Requirement changes were under discussion around 2013, he said, when the district began focusing on Next Generation Science Standards, which began as a multi-state effort within the United States to create a coherent structure that might be applied more broadly as national and international benchmarks in science. 

Wisconsin adopted the standards in 2017 and the Fort Atkinson School District adopted the curriculum in an effort to mirror the standard, Westby said. 

Before the new standards were adopted, he noted, Fort Atkinson High School students could graduate with two credits of science. The system did not provide an opportunity for every student to learn something within each of the four sciences, he said. 

“Physics is really about how things work. Now it is a requirement,” Westby noted. 

While teaching the concepts of physics remains consistent, learning how to engage the kids has changed, Westby said.  

Engaging students 

“Teaching is like theater: when you are at a good play, you are drawn into that world. If I can do that, as an educator, then I’m doing it right. People remember how they feel,” Westby said, adding that he works to make students feel interested or excited about scientific processes. 

As a teacher, he said, he asks himself: “How do I make them feel excited about these processes that are unfamiliar?”

Students often arrive into his classrooms with misconceptions about how the world works, Westby said. The answers are found in the sciences: physics, biology and chemistry, he added.  

Today, he said, he finds that many students are less willing to take risks, and he finds, fewer kids have the ability to make things with their hands.

Said Westby: “Fewer than 20 years ago, more kids could construct things. When we were in school, we made paper airplanes and learned about how they worked. This makes me want to make things with the kids. 

“What we see and how we perceive things from a 14-year-old’s point of view has to change to describe how it works, that’s why it is intimidating; it’s hard to let go of misconceptions about how things actually work.” 

Within Westby’s science room are spaces for lectures and lab work. 

Class sizes vary from anywhere between 15 and 28 kids, he said. Challenges sometimes come as the district works to fit required sections into each student’s schedule, he noted. 

Today he teaches three freshmen sections of physics and three sections for sophomores and up. 

“I love freshmen, they are squirrelly. It’s why I love them; my upbringing is in middle school and they are closer to that. They are squirrelly, so I’ve got to work with it,” Westby said.  

In Conceptual Physics, which, Westby said, is a relatively new class, “we ask: Why is it doing this; Why does it work this way?” 

Sometimes, a project is the best learning tool, he said, sharing as an example a lesson about fluid dynamics and buoyancy. 

“So we built some boats. Building things offers a good opportunity to make science exciting. In the freshmen year, the goal is to get them to learn, and to make science exciting,” Westby added.  

Still, he said, while he makes it fun, he doesn’t make it easy. 

“I like them to flounder. If I show them a finished project, then I get a lot of that same thing. The last thing we want is for everybody to make the same project. And not everybody’s project will work. For those who have projects that don’t work, we have to coach them along and give them suggestions, but I don’t build it for them. I say here are constraints and materials, and time, but I never show them a finished one or I’ll get a whole classroom of those,” Westby said.  

When it comes to motivation, he said: “I like to use humor a lot. Humor helps you get beyond frustration. 

“As a department and a school, the real goal is to develop meaningful relationships with students and then give them encouragement. I like to be human around them.”  

TikTok 

On Sept. 1, Westby said, with the help of a student, he made his first TikTok in class. 

The plan for the day was to share science in an inviting, familiar and instructional way, he said, adding that turning to TikTok was a way to show them science through the lens of something with which they could relate, and not an old overhead projector. 

A demonstration is successful, he said, when he feels like he’s made a connection with his students. 

“I want them to feel like when they leave this room, they will want to come back tomorrow,” he said, adding that the whole staff feels that way about lessons and the entire school building. 

“I think most kids can find someplace in our building to feel that,” he added. 

While making the TikTok videos is fun, they have a specific place: while they bring enthusiasm to the lessons, he said, they can’t get in the way. 

“Sometimes, I’ll say, ‘no phones. If we put it on TikTok then the next class will miss the surprise,’ so I’m selective,” he said. 

As a teacher, he said, he likes to be “zany,” but, he said, “I like to say: ‘let’s have fun, but get the job done.’”  

The videos are for fun and engagement. Each is between 15 and 180 seconds long, he said. 

“I have other things on YouTube for kids who miss class or who were using virtual instruction. With YouTube, I can say ‘here’s a link and the exact thing I want you to watch.’ TikTok is more of a sound byte we can use to broaden the discussion.” 

Since he began making the TikTok videos, Westby said, he has become popular on the platform. His first video garnered some 2.3 million views. 

“The first one I made was like head and shoulders above the rest, then it was hit or miss,” he noted, but he said, his kids are excited when they see a demonstration set up in class, and they ask him to bring out his phone to record.  

“When the students come in and see stuff set up on the table, they just perk up. It’s about engagement, creating that spark,” he said.  

A link to Chick Westby’s TikTok videos is here: https://www.tiktok.com/@chickwestby?