Samantha Adams is the twelfth-grade geoscience teacher at Pan American International High School at Monroe in the Bronx, New York. This is a specialized high school for Spanish-speaking immigrants who have recently moved to the United States.

When Samantha isn’t leading her students outside to measure atmospheric aerosols or helping them practice orienteering out of a zombie apocalypse, she’s teaching them the best way to construct a building that won’t collapse in an earthquake, or how to use ground-based telescopes to search for exoplanets. Occasionally, she likes to perform science “magic tricks,” just to make sure her students are paying attention.

An unrepentant science nerd, Samantha looks for every opportunity to learn more about Earth and its place in the universe. During the school year, she bats ideas back and forth with her fellow Math for America Master Teachers. In summers past, she’s waded up to her waist in mud in New York’s Piermont Marsh and up to her ears in particulate matter data at NASA Langley Research Center in Virginia.

When she’s not teaching or learning science, Samantha enjoys reading science fiction (there seems to be a theme emerging here) and dancing to swing.