By Luisa Levine, STEAM Teacher, Friends Select School, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 

An Xplorlabs Educator Fellow attending the Annual Research Symposium shares her thoughts on being included in emerging research and inspiring her students with what she learned. 

During the ULRI 2026 Annual Research Symposium, I attended talks, panels, and breakout sessions alongside the other Xplorlabs Educator Fellows that spoke to both our personal and professional interests. When we met up at the end of each day, we were exhausted but excited to share a golden nugget of information, something interesting we learned, or a connection we made to a personal experience or to our curriculum.  

At a breakout session concerning the evolving landscape of battery recycling, we were glued to our seats, eager to learn about the challenges and opportunities quickly arising as technology and resources change. The speakers at this panel — research scientists and entrepreneurs — gave us so much new and detailed information that I found myself brimming with questions I hadn’t known to ask before, as well as new topical material to explore with my students in the fall. What I had been teaching about battery chemistry was no longer abstract, because right here in this breakout session was a researcher from Nissan who was really doing the work. 

The networking and relationship building were as equally important as the sessions. One fellow revealed her excitement when she discovered the woman she had been candidly chatting with was an expert panelist at the following plenary session. Halfway through an afternoon session, another fellow eagerly summoned me to meet her new acquaintance, who worked in alternative educator pathways. Another day of the symposium, I met a ULRI intern in the elevator as we were both going out on an early morning jog. I learned he was part of a research team studying sodium-ion batteries (which I had never heard of), he was about to work for Tesla, that he dearly missed his hometown of Mumbai, and yes, he would love to talk to my high school engineering class about his role in developing and testing the emerging energy technology. 

During small group discussions after the symposium, our fellowship cohort made graphics to identify the most impactful parts of the symposium. We had multifaceted, fruitful discussions about our students, our curricula, the particular social and environmental challenges of our disparate biota (for example, rural Arizona vs. urban Philadelphia). What we were learning spoke to what we were already feeling and observing, enriching our understanding of science, students, and pedagogy. 

The symposium was reinvigorating and reminded me that teaching is part of the bigger picture of creating our societal future. Investing in teachers is investing in tomorrow.  

My goal as an educator is to give students the tools to be curious, to love learning, and to build the confidence to make a difference. Being included in emerging research gives teachers like me a way to make our curricula relevant, and to inspire students by trusting them to solve real problems. The young people in my classroom are passionate, creative, and enormously ambitious. Putting my students at the forefront of science and technology gives them an avenue to true success beyond the classroom.