Glesner Teaching Philosophy

Hi, my name is Marcus Glesner and I am a science teacher at Pioneer High School. I work in Ann Arbor, a diverse district. Not only do I have students with a diverse set of skills and needs but my students also speak a multitude of languages. My teaching has grown and changed to adapt to the many content and language challenges of working with my students. Multilingual students can be successful learners and positive contributors to general education classrooms[1]; like special education students, multilingual students may require support and intentional teaching choices to learn best[2]. I believe that all students can learn and contribute to science class, and accommodating the different needs of students through universal design[3][4] can make teaching and lesson planning less overwhelming.

The front of Ann Arbor's Pioneer High School

I believe students learn best by doing. They learn science best by taking on the role of a scientist with experiments, labs, or activities. They learn the intellectual skills of a scientist through modelling, arguing from evidence, and designing experiments. Students also learn academic English and science language by using these language skills through the course of lessons and their interactions with others. This is why I design lessons around what I want my students to know or be able to do, and then design activities that ask them to experience those goals.

A student observing a model skull
Students working together to count objects related to their class
A studen using forceps to pick and adjust small items on a table
Students learn by hypothesizing outcomes, conducting experiments, debating results, and constructing knowledge with their peers. (Marcus) views science as an active and interactive process, and as a result, students are excited to go to class and learn. An image of a letter of recommendation from Mr Hodges
Excerpt of a letter penned by mentor teacher, Mr Hodges, during my student teaching at Holt High School. From the beginning I was trying to make science class about students actively participating and interacting. (Click the letter image to see the whole letter)
AST modeling example
I was originally trained as a science teacher through the lens of “Ambitious Science Teaching”[8], which asks students to question, model, collaborate, and build ideas from evidence. At the start of my career I was already thinking about, “How do I get my students to do science and communicate about science?

As suggested by Long’s Interaction hypothesis[5], students need to use language to learn, understand, and remember the language skills and vocabulary they are practicing so I deliberately design student communication into my lessons. Task-Based Language Teaching[6][7] is a teaching approach that helps educators design lessons with structured reasons for students to use / develop language skills while exploring content. While all students benefit from language learning, special education and multilingual students need to have language development as an intentional focus during lesson planning and execution; I find task-based language teaching provides a scaffold for me to marry content and language learning in my pedagogy.

Example Task-Based Language Teaching Lesson

Lesson Plan Student Hand Out

Example Task-Based Language Teaching Lesson

Lesson Plan Student Hand Out

I find the students who need the most support are multilingual students. Since joining the Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages program (TESOL) at WMU, I have learned ML students struggle to access course content because of a lack of comprehensibility. Krashen talks about how students need comprehensible input in order to learn content and language in the classroom[9]. This can take many forms, but I focus on making all my curriculum more accessible as well as giving students more methods to express their learning through projects, retakes, and even daily classwork. I use different approaches to lesson construction to help me structure language use and communication tasks into my science lessons. Methodologies like Task-based language teaching, Content-based language instruction, and SIOP help me provide scaffolded opportunities for student language growth. Most students need opportunities for language growth but this also strengthens science content learning because students are using and reasoning with the science content in new and more conscious ways as they communicate with each other.

Example Reading Adapted To Multiple Skill Levels

Soil Erosion Article (High Skill) Soil Erosion Article (Low Skill)

References

  1. Scanlan, Martin, "An Asset-Based Approach to Linguistic Diversity" (2007). College of Education Faculty Research and Publications. 123.
  2. García, O., & Kleifgen, J. A. (2018). Educating emergent bilinguals: Policies, programs, and practices for English learners. Teachers College Press. Ch 3: Programs and Policies for Educating Emergent Bilinguals. pp. 29 - 49.
  3. Wikipedia. (24 August 2026). Universal Design. Wikipedia.
  4. Wikipedia. (17 June 2026). Universal Design for Learning. Wikipedia.
  5. Gass, S. M. (2015). Chapter 11. Comprehensible input and output in classroom interaction. In N. Markee (Ed.), The handbook of classroom discourse and interaction, (pp. 182–197). John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated.
  6. Wikipedia. (20 September 2026). Task-based language teaching. Wikipedia.
  7. Celce-Murcia, Brinton, D., & Snow, M. A. (2014). Teaching English as a second or foreign language (Fourth edition): Nunan: Task-Based Teaching and Learning. Chapter 29. pp. 455 - 470.
  8. Ambitious Science Teaching. (2026). Ambitious Science Teaching.
  9. Gass, S. M. (2015). Chapter 11. Comprehensible input and output in classroom interaction. In N. Markee (Ed.), The handbook of classroom discourse and interaction, (pp. 182–197). John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated.