Lesson plans that leave young students covered in permanent black ink are not a typical topic of learning in teacher preparation programs.

Thankfully, UW Bothell Professor Carole Kubota (Ph.D. '85) is not typical either. Her creativity in the classroom has helped shape science education in Washington state, and earned her the 2005 UW Distinguished Teacher Award.

Prof. Kubota is a firm believer that teachers must be unafraid to make mistakes. Becoming comfortable with the occasional error in the classroom was a lesson she learned the hard way.

Years ago, as a young teacher at the Pacific Science Center, Kubota was tasked with teaching young field trippers about fingerprinting. She wanted the lesson to be engaging and fun, so she planned to have her students learn about fingerprints by taking their own. She bought blotters and ink, and even went to the police station to learn how to take fingerprints from the professionals.

Yet Kubota's planning was undone by a simple mistake: she purchased the wrong kind of ink. Instead of leaving class with crisp prints on clean blotters, her students filed out with ink matting their hair, staining their shirts and smearing their faces. Kubota was mortified, but undaunted. The next time she taught her fingerprinting lesson, she had students create prints with pencil lead and scotch tape.

Prof. Kubota makes a point to share this story with her students to assure them that making mistakes comes with the territory of being an effective teacher.

"You can't beat yourself up if you make a mistake," she says. "Scientists never say an experiment failed because it didn't turn out the way they expected. They observe what happened and innovate."

Her willingness to innovate has been handy as new research continues to alter our notions about teaching and learning. After coming across studies demonstrating the value of discourse and reflection to the learning process, Prof. Kubota increased opportunities for her students to collaborate in class and set aside time for them to reflect on their work. She was pleased to see her students' self-confidence increase and their teaching improve as a result.

"Teachers have to be open to new ideas. They can't be afraid to make mistakes," Prof. Kubota says smiling. "I teach way differently now than I did 10 years ago."

Kubota is convinced that no teacher becomes a good teacher on his or her own, and is happy to be a perfect case in point. She credits colleagues for offering many of the ideas that have made her a more effective teacher. She says she loves to discuss teaching challenges with colleagues and "steal" what has worked for them for use in her own classroom.

Facilitating the exchange of information between teachers keeps Kubota energized. She convened a conference of 65 Washington state science teachers to determine how science teachers could help to develop their students' writing skills. A literacy expert recommended that the group require students to write down their ideas about the scientific concepts and experiments they were studying in a notebook every day.

Kubota loved the idea and appreciated its dual purposes. Students would learn to articulate their ideas about scientific concepts. Teachers would get a daily glimpse into each student's progress in grasping the subject matter. It wasn't long before she began using student notebooks as a tool in her work training at UW-Bothell. Now when former students come to visit, they bring the notebooks they have their own students produce.

It's hard to believe that a teacher exhibiting such passion for science education came to the UW hating science. Kubota entered junior school thinking science was about discovery, but a curmudgeonly high school science teacher taught her otherwise. After a year of memorizing charts and formulae in the back of a blocky text book, Kubota felt it best to consider another area of study once she got to college. In fact, she would not take another science course until her senior year at the UW.

But thanks to UW Prof. Arthur Kruckeberg, the first science class she took at the UW made an impression that lasted a lifetime.

Prof. Kruckeberg viewed science as a way of looking at the world. He encouraged his students to always reach for new knowledge and to come to new understandings. Years later, Kubota would write Kruckeberg a thank you note for rekindling her love of science. Kruckeberg was touched by the gesture, telling her he'd never received a note like Kubota's from any other student.

Just a few months short of graduation, she changed majors to science education. Her own high school days were ample proof that a bad teacher could lay waste to a student's interest in learning. Kubota wanted to make science as exciting for others as Prof. Kruckeberg had for her.

COE Professor Roger Olstad showed her how.

"Roger told me science was a black box," Kubota remembers. "He told me to never stop learning."

She never has. In her fourth decade as an educator, Kubota is grateful to have worked with so many educators, and thrilled to see her students excelling in classrooms around the state. And if they ever need some advice on how to coordinate a lesson plan on fingerprinting, they know just where to turn.