Bringing Science To Life

By Tim Smith | Photos by Bryan Mitchell

With apologies to Bill Nye, there’s another “science guy” in town – namely Scott Milam, the ubertalented chemistry teacher at Plymouth High School.

Milam already has numerous major teaching awards under his belt, including one in 2017 for Michigan Science Teacher of the Year. But this year could be his biggest haul – he is among finalists for the 2021 Presidential Award for Excellence in Mathematics and Science Teachers.

Does Milam even know the timeframe about whether he needs to plan a trip to the White House? Not one iota.

“It’s very mysterious, and you don’t know,” said Milam, talking about the PAEMST notification process. “Kind of the tradeoff of winning and going through the process is you just have to be ready.”

Milam said earning the 2017 state award was surprising and “probably quite a bit undeserved. I kind of had a sit-down moment after that award and was like ‘You know, I could do better than I do at teaching.’”

In 2019, he was a PAEMST finalist but did not prevail. That’s when he committed himself to try to win that coveted award, mapping out ways he could improve his own performance in order to make that last step up the ladder.

Victorious or not this time around, Milam isn’t about to stop his relentless pursuit of knowledge and effectively getting it across to the students sitting in his classroom.

Milam prides himself on not merely spewing out information for students to absorb. Instead, he brings the science lab to life and strives to spark kids’ imagination – with teaching “elements” including discovery, discussion and critical thinking.

To that end, he’ll wear a necktie, bowtie or – during the just-concluded year of COVID-19 safety precautions – a face mask, featuring the Periodic Table of Elements.

“I do like the mask a lot, it’s very big and comfortable,” said Milam, who started his Plymouth High School tenure in 2010 following four years in the Lincoln Park district. “But when you teach, you want to play that role of like, kids want to feel safe and that learning is the focal point in the classroom.”

Presiding over a classroom environment where kids can let loose and have some fun while getting after the day’s lesson seems like an optimal situation.

Milam also is a roll-up-the-sleeves type who never stops trying to up his game so that high school students (both in general chemistry and International Baccalaureate programs) leave any particular day’s lesson more engaged and more excited about the subject.

He keeps up on former students’ college successes (or failures) and files away their letters and e-mails to gauge whether his approach is doing what he most wants it to do – encourage learning itself.

“I want them to be able to learn chemistry well,” Milam said. “I want to know that they learned it well.”

There’s no doubt in the mind of 2020 Plymouth graduate and Howard University chemistry major Kennedy Chastang that her former teacher is connecting with numerous line drives in that regard.

For starters, Milam never was too obvious in answering students’ questions, always leaving answers just under the surface – enough to prompt inquisitive minds to dig deeper.

“Mr. Milam never gave me the answers I wanted,” wrote Chastang in a recent e-mail. “I could visit him with a question and leave only with a hint toward the right direction.

“If I was persistent, he ended any further questions with a shrug…but despite how discouraged I initially felt, I realized that everything he did (or didn’t do) inspired me to love not only the answer, but also the process of finding it. There’s a reward that comes with struggling in education and I learned it’s addicting.”

Chastang didn’t exactly struggle, however. At Plymouth, she eclipsed the 4.3 grade-point mark. Her college path at the Washington D.C.-based Howard University undoubtedly is informed by what Milam taught her; she is majoring in chemistry and minoring in Spanish.

“Don’t be surprised if you ever step into Mr. Milam’s class and find yourself staring at 25 students in a circle with whiteboards,” Chastang noted. “Chances are, they just finished a demonstration or experiment and were tasked with determining an explanation (the more pictures, the better).

“What were those gas particles doing that made the pressure rise with temperature? What bonds were breaking when you ripped that piece of paper or tore that piece of tin foil? Trying to work through the why of chemistry, especially with peers who may disagree, further encouraged us to think deeply.”

Being a role model and essentially “showing his work” is underscored by reading all kinds of books 52 weeks a year – then mimeographing covers of books he consumed and pasting that evidence outside the doorway leading into his classroom.

The 2006 University of Michigan graduate also sets goals constantly, sitting down after each Friday’s classes to write down critiques on how he performed over the past week.

Of course, those are habits he hopes his students pick up on as important in so many ways. And reading tops that list.

“I probably read a book a week,” said Milam, whose outer classroom door is covered with mimeographs of various book covers (of titles he has read in the past few years). “I’ll talk about them…that’s a nice way to interject stuff that’s not entirely focused on chemistry. Although some of them are chemistry books, too.”

During the COVID-19 lockdown beginning in March 2020, Milam turned unexpected free time into book-reading time. He poured through 72 tomes, including those with titles such as The Teenage Brain (by Dr. Frances E. Jensen), Thinking Fast and Slow (by Daniel Kahneman) and Superheavy: Making and Breaking the Periodic Table (by Kit Chapman).

“I really love ones about how the brain works,” Milam said. “I really like this one, Superheavy, about how you make new elements. And what the history of that is. The Poison Squad (by Deborah Blum) is super interesting.”

What would spark such a tireless and voracious reading habit? Because it rings the bell with teenagers that learning is something that never stops. And it’s leading by example.

Scott Milam, a 2021 Presidential Award for Excellence in Mathematics and Science Teachers finalist, on his love of reading (he tries to read a book a week)

“Oh absolutely, because then I’m learning, I’m not telling you to learn,” Milam noted. “When you talk to any of my students, and you say ‘Does he (Milam) learn a lot of stuff?’ They’d be like ‘yes.’ And does that make an impact on a kid? I think absolutely. They want to see someone who puts their skin in the game a little bit.”

Oh, and he also is an author. He wrote No Teacher Left Behind during some down time between teaching kids, running workshops and—of course— reading.

“That’s my fun, comedy fiction book,” said Milam, after pulling a copy out of his desk drawer.

From beams of light and Slinky demonstrations to regaling students with informative and entertaining “origin” stories about phosphorus and seaborgium, Milam brings flair and energy to the classroom without sacrificing the process of learning.

He recalled a discussion about how the first element of modern times (phosphorus) was discovered in the late 1600s by scientist Hennig Brand. According to Wikipedia, bathtubs of urine were boiled down into a glow-in-the-dark white paste, earning it the name “Miraculous Bearer of Light” (or, in ancient Greek terms, phosphorus).

As for Element 106, seaborgium, Milam said it was named in the mid-20th century after Nobel Prize-winning American nuclear chemist and Michigan native Glenn T. Seaborg, who died in 1999. But the official coining of that synthetic element triggered a firestorm, centering around what the official name should be.

“When they named that after him, there was a huge controversy, where multiple countries were claiming that they had discovered these (synthetic) elements,” Milam explained. “Initially, they named it after him and then recanted, that (they were) not going to name it after someone who’s alive. It’s too political.”

Then came negotiations, which concluded with the official unveiling of seaborgium in Seaborg’s honor.

“When they announced it, his daughter was driving and thought he must have died, because they said they weren’t going to name an element after a living person.” Milam noted. “So she pulled off the road frantic, trying to get to a pay phone…finally, she was able to call him.”

Those “Ripley’s Believe It or Not” type stories also are deployed to better imprint complex information into inquisitive minds for future retrieval.

“If you pick an element, I can probably tell you something about it,” Milam said. “I read a lot about them. I read the stories because brains are better remembering stories than anything else.

“You’ll likely remember those things I said about the urine and the phosphorus and the daughter thinking her dad was dead, more so than maybe the chemistry from them. Or anything else from this whole process.”

But maybe that’s the secret to his genius. Always leave them wanting to discover for themselves.

Chastang, for one, is thankful to have gotten plenty of “yeah, so” type responses to her questions.

“I believe Mr. Milam’s class is a major part of the reason I am pursuing an MD/PhD degree, because that’s what research is, right?” Chastang said. “Looking at an unknown and having it shrug right back at you – daring you to find the answer yourself.”