When Stephanie Toro started teaching science to local students she asked them to draw a typical scientist.

“They almost all drew someone old, white and male,” the Bermuda Zoological Society education officer said. “Their scientist often looked like Albert Einstein with beakers and a lab coat.”

After a few weeks of BZS’s new science curriculum, “Generating Academic Success and Science”, she repeated the exercise.

The mindset of many children had changed.

“Many students drew themselves in Bermuda,” Dr Toro said.

One child sketched herself with turtles, while another depicted herself doing different types of science.

That was mission accomplished for Dr Toro, and BZS.

Dr Toro said: “We want all students to see themselves as being able to do science, whether they choose to do it as a career or not.”

GASS aims to help Bermuda’s young people become their natural, inquisitive, scientific selves.

“It’s a beautiful thing,” Dr Toro said. “Every child comes to you good at heart. It’s just about stripping away all those other things and letting them be their best self.”

Previously, she taught at Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá, Colombia, where her expertise was pedagogy, and science education. For the last two and a half years, from afar, she has been helping BZS develop GASS.

“GASS really focuses on scientific and engineering practices,” Dr Toro said. “It is about getting students to think and act like a scientist. They learn how to ask questions and get credible information.”

In August she moved to the island to become an education officer at BZS, working directly with students, staff and educators.

In one primary five lesson about human joints, students designed a hand that could pick up a ball. In another class learners designed a seed to disperse through wind, gravity or water.

“It can get really loud,” Dr Toro said. “I have them all pretending to be trees. They are standing on top of their chairs and they are dropping the seeds they have designed. They get really into it, which is great. It gives them the chance to be playful.”

High-energy students tend to thrive in this active class.

“It's a great time to just be free and loud and boisterous and be yourself,” Dr Toro said.

During the school term students make regular visits to BAMZ to check out different aspects of what they are learning.

In the past, students got on a bus once a school term and went to the Bermuda Aquarium, Museum & Zoo to learn about turtles, whales or some other one-off topic.

They can still do that, but Dr Toro and other members of the BZS educational team are now going directly into schools.

Dr Toro wants to be the teacher she needed when she was a child.

Growing up in Norfolk, Virginia, she tested as gifted, but in fifth grade was talking back to teachers, falling asleep in class and failing to do her work.

“Some teachers said I was lazy,” Dr Toro said.

One of her teachers saw things differently.

“She figured out that I was bored,” Dr Toro said. “I needed something to get me excited about school.”

Her teacher put her into an advanced maths class with five other students.

“That class probably saved me,” Dr Toro said. “We could only be there if we were doing well and behaving in all our other classes.”

After entering the class she fell in love with school again.

Today, Dr Toro has a master’s degree in science teaching and a doctorate in curriculum instruction for science.

She recently led a workshop on using artificial intelligence in the classroom. She embraces AI in education.

“It is no different from when phones came out, or the internet came out,” she said.

She said whatever AI spits out still has to be fact checked, like any other resource.

“Teachers who do not embrace these tools will get left behind,” she said.

Dr Toro said the tests they did with their high school students were open book. She is fine with it if they can find some way to use AI to answer their questions.

“We always tell students if you want to do authentic science you have to know what your resources are, and how to use them,” she said.

BZS’s educational programming also involves stewardship and conservation.

“We take students to Trunk Island or to Spittal Pond and help them connect with Bermuda’s backyard,” the educator said.

In the spring they will have a field trip for primary 6 students that looks at different soils.

“They're going to use probes and measure the pH and the moisture of the soil and set up experiments comparing different habitats,” she said.

She is still settling into life in Bermuda.

“It is small here,” she said. “Bogotá had ten million people and was very congested. In Bermuda, I ride my e-bike to work and just about every day someone says I saw you riding to work today. You can’t go anywhere without someone honking or waving or knowing who you are.”