Today at Brown

It may seem exotic these days for an Ivy League science major, but Kevin Kenji O’Brien plans to be a public-school teacher. His experiences over the past four years prove that not only can he do it, but the world needs more Kevin Kenji O’Briens.

During his undergraduate career, O’Brien has taught environmental science and sex education to Providence high-school students; in the summers, he taught eighth-grade chemistry in Sacramento. The Davis, California, native also has participated in and coordinated Swearer Center-sponsored teaching programs OLEEP (outdoor education), MUSE (middle-school science), and PHASE (Peer HIV/AIDS Sexual Education Program).

A winner of the Woodrow Wilson-Rockefeller Brothers Fund Fellowship for Aspiring Teachers of Color, O’Brien earned his Sc.B. degree with honors in the environmental health track of human biology. He will teach in Chile next year, then return to teach science in an inner-city U.S. school for at least three years.

Perhaps most impressive: For his senior thesis project, O’Brien wrote an environmental science curriculum for Providence high school teachers.

“Teaching brings together all the aspects of my life,” says O’Brien, “and I love that connection with the students. The time to be a teacher is when I’m young, passionate, idealistic, and can throw everything I have into it.”

One of O’Brien’s gifts is the ability to connect with many age levels. Another is the courage to tackle tough subjects: In PHASE, O’Brien created and conducted workshops for Providence high school students on sexual anatomy, contraception, sexually transmitted infections, and healthy relationships. “Sexual health was something I was always interested in teaching,” O’Brien said. “Having instructors close to their age made [the students] feel comfortable and open to talk about sexual education.

“My involvement with PHASE taught me a lot about ways to address sensitive issues within diverse communities. One of the girls in my class was six months pregnant, and at first I was nervous about having her in the class,” he says. “But she was willing to share her experiences with the class, and she became an amazing resource.”

Teaching in the PHASE program wasn’t O’Brien’s first classroom experience. He taught science to underserved middle-schoolers for two summers through the national education nonprofit Breakthrough Collaborative, which hired O’Brien as a recruiter his junior year.

His experiences with Breakthrough and at Brown’s Third World Center have honed his career path. “A big reason why I am interested in education and teaching is social justice,” O’Brien said. “I see education as the most important way to eradicate social inequity, which is why I want to work specifically in urban public schools.”

Last fall, in his Social Entrepreneurship class at Brown, O’Brien worked with Providence nonprofit RISE (Rhode Islanders Sponsoring Education) to develop a business plan for the organization’s new job-training and placement program for children of incarcerated parents. “In writing the plan, I worked closely with the executive director of RISE and also interviewed several of the children to design a program to best fit their needs,” he says. “The class piqued my interest in working with nonprofits and provided me with many skills I could use if I were to start and run my own nonprofit.”

But if his thesis is any indication, the classroom is O’Brien’s natural place. “Kevin’s commitment, integrity of purpose, and scholarship has resulted in his curriculum being adopted and implemented this spring at the Met school in Providence,” says Daniel Bisaccio, Brown’s director of science education in the MAT program and O’Brien’s advisor on the project.

At the Met (formally known as the Metropolitan Regional Career and Technical Center), six teachers enrolled in a three-month training workshop O’Brien developed on environmental waste – “the proliferation of surplus, obsolete, broken or discarded electrical devices such as computers, cell phones, iPods, et cetera,” he explains, “all of which contain high levels of carcinogens such as lead and mercury.”

Next, the teachers and O’Brien conducted classes and workshops for 60 high school students, who learned about e-waste hazards and possible solutions specific to Rhode Island. All participated in an e-waste symposium on Earth Day this past April at Brown’s campus.

“Kevin is now preparing a manuscript to submit to the Green Teacher, a peer-reviewed professional journal for science educators,” Bisaccio says. “Sharing his research and curriculum with the professional science-teaching community is one of many indicators of Kevin’s integrity and passion for educating others.”