Chem Couple

We taught together (including sharing an office/lab prep area) for 24 years before retiring from high school teaching. Our wide range of courses included Chemistry, Honors Chemistry, Organic Chemistry, Materials Science, and AP Chemistry. We are excited to offer high quality products here on TPT and share free ideas through our newsletter at chemcouple.com.

We emphasize a highly organized and systematic approach to learning chemistry. Chemistry encompasses a relatively small set of ideas and rules that leads us to a deep understanding of the world around us. Our approach focuses on interconnecting the three domains of chemical understanding – particulate, symbolic, and macroscopic. To us, the symbol “NaCl” evokes not just the written formula, but also a grain of salt as well as a lattice of alternating ions. Isn’t this the type of understanding that you want for your students? Above all, we made our classrooms fun and engaging places for our students to grow and interact with their peers. Learning chemistry is hard work, but sometimes a bit of wackiness is needed.

Both David and Kathy were separately named Advanced Placement Teacher Award Winners for Wisconsin by the Siemens Foundation. We guided over 1,000 students to passing scores on the AP Chemistry exam. Kathy pioneered the school’s Materials Science class, one of only a few in the state. She was a guest speaker for the Milwaukee Chapter of ASM (Materials Science Association) detailing her efforts to promote Materials Science education. David authored a 2018 Journal of Chemical Education article (https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jchemed.7b00965) for his benchtop NMR spectrometer research project in a high school setting.

For the curious, the Chem Couple met during graduate school at the University of Wisconsin – Madison where we received our MS degrees in Chemistry.