S3-02: How science strengthens literacy and language development
In our second episode of the season, we continue finding ways that science is overlooked and how it can be better utilized in schools—and as an ally to other subjects!
We sat down with Susan Gomez Zwiep, former middle school science teacher and senior science educator and staff advocate at BSCS Science Learning. She shared past experiences and research that shows the benefits of integrating science and literacy, as well as strategies for applying these ideas in the classroom.
We hope you enjoy this episode and explore more from Science Connections by visiting our main page!
Dr. Susan Gomez Zwiep (00:00):
We started to see this trend of students communicating more in English because they were excited about the science that they had been learning.
Eric Cross (00:10):
Welcome to Science Connections. I’m your host Eric Cross. In this third season, we’re exploring the theme of science as the underdog. And last time around, we delved into the data showing that compared to other subjects, science is often put on the back burner. Now it’s time to explore why it’s so important to change that and how to do it effectively. So over the course of these coming episodes, we’re gonna make the case for science and equip you with data and strategies for advancing science in your own home, school, or community. To kick things off, we’re going to spend a few episodes going in depth on the integration of science and English instruction. We know we need to dramatically improve literacy rates in this country, and as we’ll show in the coming episodes, science can be a key ally in that goal. We’ll also show how language development and literacy instruction can support science. Yes, it can be a win-win, folks. To start out, I’m joined by someone who has been studying science and language development for more than a decade. Dr. Susan Gomez Zwiep is a senior science educator and staff advocate for BSCS Science Learning. On this episode, she talks about her own experience as a middle school science teacher and share some key insights and strategies from the research on integrating science and English language development. Please enjoy this conversation with Dr. Susan Gomez Zwiep.
Eric Cross (01:36):
Welcome to the podcast. Thank you for being here and having this really important conversation. So I’m so glad you can make it, Susan.
Dr. Susan Gomez Zwiep (01:43):
Yeah, I’m excited to be here.
Eric Cross (01:44):
We’re gonna talk all about language development and science. But first I was hoping that you can just kind of set the stage and tell the listeners about yourself and how you came about to studying this specific subject.
Dr. Susan Gomez Zwiep (01:57):
Sure. So I am a California native. I grew up in the San Gabriel Valley and that’s where I started teaching. I have an undergraduate degree in integrated biology from UC Berkeley. And I thought I was gonna go be a field scientist. And while I was waiting for grad school applications to run their course, I took a substitute job in Montebello to kind of bide my time. And because I had a science degree, they asked if I would take a permanent placement, well, a temporary permanent placement. And I said sure. And found myself teaching seventh and eighth grade general science to a population that at the time was about 68% English language learners, in a school that you would consider urban, under-resourced with a community that was large percentage immigrants from Mexico, Central and South America. And I never looked back. I kept that job.
Dr. Susan Gomez Zwiep (03:04):
I loved it. I love the middle school classroom. I love teaching science to my middle school students and truly, truly just found a really good home for my love of science, but also my love for talking about science and helping other people understand science. So at some point I was entertained with the idea of going to graduate school. So while I was still teaching, I actually did a Ph.D. At the University of Southern California in the science education field. And once there, realized that I actually had a unique experience in higher ed, that experience of teaching with populations that are learning English or have home languages other than English, was actually not common in higher ed circles. And being from that community was also not common. And so I pretty quickly leveraged that experience to combat what I think is universally agreed as an equity issue that in my school where I taught, the district had advocated for ELs to get an extra hour of language development in order to promote their English language proficiency.
Dr. Susan Gomez Zwiep (04:28):
And, our principal wisely said, there are not enough English-only students in this school to do that without losing all of our science teachers because there’s not enough kids left to actually fill a day, a teacher’s day. And she said, these kids learn more language in their science courses than they do anywhere else, so I don’t wanna remove that. But the reality is, is that at that time–this was in the late nineties, early two thousands–if you were not proficient in English, you went to more time with language development. And that makes a lot of sense in some ways. But when you look at the big picture, you realize, well, that means those kids aren’t going to science and they’re not having opportunities to have consistent quality science learning opportunities simply because they spoke a language other than English at home. And so that’s really how I fell into this work.
Eric Cross (05:28):
And that has a downstream effect. I mean, once you start pulling students from a course, that automatically sets the trajectory for later outcomes, which we ultimately see in STEM fields where we, we don’t see the population of our students represented in the STEM fields. Now, I know this goes back a few years, but you were doing research for your Ph.D. What did you start to follow?
Dr. Susan Gomez Zwiep (05:50):
Yeah, so I eventually took a position at Cal State Long Beach, which was not by chance, it’s a Hispanic-serving institution, and that’s where I wanted to do my academic work. And once I was there, sought funding with a district to support elementary science learning. So it had a teacher professional learning component that was both summer and in-class, sort of like PD in the classroom component. And the district came back and said, the only way you are gonna get time to even talk about science in elementary school is if it’s attached to language development. And so that’s what we did. It was a three-year grant, there was a sister grant that followed–so all told, it was about a five-year program where we basically said, what if instead of following the traditional ELD, English Language Development curriculum, we modified and put science as the context for language development in the K2 bands.
Dr. Susan Gomez Zwiep (07:01):
Teachers at the district traditionally had not been excited about their language development curriculum until we said, we’re gonna take that and we’re gonna do some science instead. And then they were like, no, no, no! We love our ELD curriculum. But they hung in there with us. The project was successful enough that it actually became a K4 and then a K5 project. The district ended up having to put in a ton of money into this because the grant only paid for so much. But their schools actually wanted “in” ’cause what they heard is when we put science as a context for language development, kids were talking more. Kids were speaking in English more. Kids were writing more. Kids were engaged. And the ultimate, kids were developing English quickly and in a community where you could actually operate within the community without speaking English. These are Spanish-speaking communities and the schools operated in Spanish outside the classroom. So if you walked into the school’s office, the principal secretary, the person who manned the door, spoke Spanish. The field supervisors that the lunch supervisors spoke Spanish.
Eric Cross (08:17):
The non-teaching staff that are supporting the rest of the students outside of the classroom.
Dr. Susan Gomez Zwiep (08:23):
Yeah. Everybody spoke Spanish and they spoke Spanish at school. And even the principals came back and said, from being in this project, that the kids were coming into the office and had transitioned to communicating in English, especially when they wanted to talk about science, and they really wanted to talk about science ’cause they were super excited about the stuff that they were learning. So we started to see this trend of students communicating more in English because they were excited about the science that they had been learning. And yeah, that sold itself and we had schools jumping in.
Eric Cross (09:01):
So you started off in a situation where you were told that you had to, if you wanna get science and you had to merge it into English, basically. And is it fair to say that that’s because of testing requirements that schools have on them? Like this is what gets analyzed or what was the purpose behind that?
Dr. Susan Gomez Zwiep (09:15):
It was district policy and it was site policy and those policies were put into place for very good intentions. Students don’t get reclassified into English only, and reclassification is how you traditionally got access to all this other programming, electives, AP college prep, all those other things. And the best way to get them reclassified was to learn English, and to learn it sooner rather than later. So it was in an attempt to get kids reclassified from English learner to English proficient.
Eric Cross (09:55):
And then during that process it was able to be expanded to K4. And then with these open-minded teachers, you gave them the content, they used science as the context for learning. And then your students who were mostly emerging bilinguals and multilingual students, you found that they started speaking English more frequently. What did you make of that result? Like what did you come to after seeing all that happen?
Dr. Susan Gomez Zwiep (10:20):
So I do wanna say that there’s a couple of reasons why we think this works so well. But I have to really acknowledge that there were linguistics, second language acquisition experts that were part of this team. And we wouldn’t have been able to make any of this work if it was purely science educators leading this cause. There’s a lot we didn’t understand about language development, and they really helped us. But one of the things that we think is unique about science, there’s a few really important aspects–one is that we all have experiences in the natural world, since we can process outside information, right? We all have observations, things we’ve observed with our eyes, we’ve heard, we’ve felt, and all of those experiences build some pretty good science ideas before we enter formal schooling. You know, kids already have ideas about this.
Dr. Susan Gomez Zwiep (11:20):
We don’t have to give them language for it. They already have these concepts and experiences. The other thing is that we are inherently interested in the natural world we occupy. And so we’re curious, science is often considered cool, there are science channels and science fiction movies and science fiction books and magazines–and this is just … it’s just cool. And that tended to be the trigger, you know, when we gave kids something interesting to observe. A Ziploc bag with water that we added an Alka-Seltzer to, and strange things starts happening in the baggie. That curiosity, that excitement allowed kids to leap over any concerns they had about the language they were supposed to use in the classroom. One of the most difficult things about learning a language is using a language that is imperfect. So saying things and communicating in a language that you are not a hundred percent confident about, that you’re not sure you’re using the right words or the right tenses. But when kids were excited about this thing in a Ziploc bag, they didn’t care. They communicated however they could, sometimes in their primary language or their home language, sometimes in imperfect English, but by and large they just communicated. They did it in oral language, like listening and speaking, but they also did it in writing. And that was easy. Like we didn’t have to do anything other than provide interesting science experiences. And that’s, that’s pretty common.
Eric Cross (13:06):
Yeah. I feel like, to co-sign on the science is cool, it is objectively, if a matter of fact, even just looking at the Oscars, like we have multiverse, you know, we have sci-fi you know, the costume designer of Wakanda Forever. We have all of these different movies that are all founded in some kind of these scientific principles. And so the idea that science is cool and organic, naturally engaging is something I think we, we all can connect to and it resonates with all of us. So I feel like is sort of your origin story too.
Dr. Susan Gomez Zwiep (13:33):
That’s the origin story.
Eric Cross (13:34):
That’s the origin story right there, to continue with this like movie theme. Now if we fast forward to today, based on all the research that you’ve seen since then, and your experience, why would you advocate merging English language development and science?
Dr. Susan Gomez Zwiep (13:49):
Well, for one, the research that we conducted actually provided some really nice evidence that showed, even though we had essentially stole minutes from language development time and inserted science. And on state mandated tests and on their students’ language proficiency measures, the kids in the program with the blended, did significantly better than students who were getting ELD instruction alone. Traditional ELD instruction. And that kind of blew our mind. We would’ve been happy if they had done just fine. Like we could put science into a student’s day and do no harm. They could get their language development; they could get science. But in fact, what we found was that they did better. That they actually gained English more quickly and it showed up in multiple measures, including the state English language arts assessment, which again, kind of blew our mind.
Eric Cross (14:55):
So just to be clear about the study that you did, you looked at two groups and one was the blended science and English language development, and then the other one was a control group. And the blended group ended up showing more improvement.
Dr. Susan Gomez Zwiep (15:09):
Yes. So there’s quite a bit of research now, this research was done in the early two thousands, and the research has built around it to really suggest that this does seem to be a more efficient way to promote language development while still maintaining students’ access to a core content area. But in recent years, the standards have shifted and that has been just a remarkable, wonderful change. And both standards have shifted. So when we did our research, we did it under the old California Science standards that were fairly heavy in technical terms. They were heavy in science concepts rather than kids doing things. And they were a much narrower focus.
Eric Cross (16:04):
And these are the standards that most of us grew up on, right? Those of us who are pretty much teachers in the classroom today pretty much grew up on what you’re talking about. Is that fair to say?
Dr. Susan Gomez Zwiep (16:12):
That’s fair to say, yes. So the new standards that we have now, the California NGSS Standards emphasize not just ideas, but they also emphasize students doing things in science. And we didn’t have to build-in language portions to the standards. They now exist. The NGSS is a very, very rich linguistic opportunity for students. And at the same time, the way we’ve thought about language development has also shifted. We used to talk about language and science… we used to think about science as a lot of words, and you had to know the words, you had to have this technical language. And we’ve sort of shifted that to really thinking about, language is no longer a prerequisite for science learning. Language is now developed through the science learning or the content learning experiences.
Eric Cross (17:11):
So now there’s more chances to integrate English into science. Have you seen success stories or have you seen examples of this? Maybe just anecdotes of teachers kind of doing this since you’ve been doing this research and kind of watching. If so, would you mind sharing one or two?
Dr. Susan Gomez Zwiep (17:30):
Yeah. And I will just give a nod to Dr. Dr. Okie Lee who’s now at NYU who has really led sort of this reconception of language and science. And one of the ways she talks about it is this notion that I enter this learning experience, I enter this observation of this phenomena with fairly naive, simple scientific ideas. And my language about it is equally simple. But as I develop more and more ideas, as my understanding of the phenomenon, what I figured out becomes more sophisticated, I need more sophisticated language. And so what we’re starting to see are these spaces where teachers are building science ideas and science and understanding along with the language. And in order to do that, you really need to know what’s the storyline arc of my science lesson? What do they figure out in lesson one? What do they figure out in lesson two?
Dr. Susan Gomez Zwiep (18:35):
What do they figure out in lesson three? How are the science ideas building over time? So that I can then look at the language that they’re using and what language supports do I need in order to allow students to not only engage and figure things out, but communicate their ideas about it. And so we’re seeing teachers blow up what we call language, what we call text. It’s not just words. It’s not just sentences written on a paper, but it’s models, it’s pictorial representations, it’s gestures, it’s this wide range. We pretty much said, let’s blow language up. Let’s like use all of the linguistic registers that we have in order to make meaning of what we’re seeing it in together in this classroom. So that’s one thing that we’re starting to see. The other thing is that teachers are really allowing students opportunities to use what we call social language, non-standard dialects.
Dr. Susan Gomez Zwiep (19:40):
The language I use at home and with my friends. Because earlier I had said, we have all these experiences and those experiences in the world are tied up in my social register. They’re tied up in my home language ’cause that’s where I experience them. And to let students have access to using that language in the classroom, especially initially in a unit, means we’re giving ’em access to those experiences that they have that are related to the phenomena under study. So I totally understand the benefit of promoting academic language and promoting language frames and forms that we use in more academic settings. But it’s a sticky wicket. You have to be careful how you tell students about the way you want them to communicate. Because when we tell them that language that you use at home with your friends and family is not welcome here, we can send a message that they’re not welcome here. And that those experiences that they have outside of classroom about how things fall, the way sunlight heats up different surfaces, where you’ll find plants and what plants you will find based on conditions. All of those experiences, we’re sending a message that those are not welcome in the classroom. And so this expansion of language, including non-standard dialects and even home language, is really important for letting students bring their whole selves into the classroom.
Eric Cross (21:23):
I love what you just said. It legitimizes the funds of knowledge, the language, the cultures that our students are bringing to the table. I remember when I first learned the word code-switching in college and you know, I’m biracial, I grew up in my home community and my school community were two different communities and I ethnically, culturally belonged to both. And I had to code-switch in order to kind of survive and be accepted into different communities. And not until I was in college did I actually understand what I was doing. Now there were all kinds of teasing and jokes that went on to how I would talk if I code-switched improperly. And in my classroom, I would see students who would explain concepts in a way that was maybe like a casual register. They just were explaining it the best way they could.
Eric Cross (22:10):
And the way they were speaking was kind of denigrated or it was seen as negative even though they were communicating their concept. And when I became a middle school teacher, one of my, I don’t know, it’s like sometimes when you teach, you get to, you change how you were taught or what you experience and legitimizing my students’ language, and they would tell these beautiful stories and in their most common like, casual language, but they’re explaining the concept brilliantly. And it was phenomenal to see this barrier be removed of saying, you have to talk like this in order to be a scientist or you have to say these right words. And, and that’s what I feel like I’m hearing that in how you’re describing kind of how science has been done and what language can do to certain groups of students.
Dr. Susan Gomez Zwiep (22:58):
Yeah, very much so. And you know, back to the origin story, you know, I grew up in a multi-generational household. My mom, my aunt, my grandmother, Spanish was their first language, but they lost it because my mom was raised in Riverside and she, you know, went to school in the, the fifties and sixties and back then you weren’t allowed to speak Spanish at school. And so they lost the language.
Eric Cross (23:27):
They weren’t allowed to speak it at all.
Dr. Susan Gomez Zwiep (23:29):
At all. I didn’t directly observe it, but that is the story that my family tells, that there was no English spoken anywhere on school grounds. And that was a different issue. Right? That was very much for people unfamiliar with some of the history in Southern California. Their segregated schools, severe racism, linguistic racism, racial racism against Mexicans was a real thing. But yet I grew up in this household where the sort of way of speaking, like I think many Mexican households, the context is everything. So you can’t get to the facts until you’ve told the whole context of everything happening around it. So we used to joke that we couldn’t send my grandmother to the doctor by herself ’cause he had 15 minutes, and she was gonna take 20 just to tell him how she got there before she got to why she was there. But this telling of the context, the telling of the story around the idea is part of the linguistic, this sort of linguistic way of my household. When I got to school, I had to learn to drop it because teachers found me off topic. You know, I still have to be careful how I express things and sometimes I’m not a fast storyteller <laugh>, and I monitor that for myself. So I can only imagine what it’s like to be a kid in a classroom.
Eric Cross (24:59):
Right. And there are so many constraints in the school day, you know, especially if you’re multi-subject and you’re elementary and you’re teaching multiple subjects and someone’s trying to tell a story and you’re just like, land the plane! And they’ve, you know, gotta tell ’em the story, but realizing that when you look at it through a lens of like, culturally, this is how we communicate, then it reframes what the student is trying to do. They’re communicating to you based on how they’ve learned to communicate and they’re including essential parts of the story. And so how do you both honor that while also, you know, certain things like brevity and being concise and things like that that they’ll have to learn. But also honoring that and making sure that there’s space for that in your classroom. Even me, I’m thinking about this where I had students record this video and it was one minute to two-and-a-half minutes explaining three concepts. And I had students coming up to me afterwards saying, Mr. Cross, I need to record two videos because two-and-a-half minutes is not long enough. And I was like, how? I even extended it. But I’m realizing and listening to you and going, they’re probably not just getting to the point. They’re probably including more context into this because that’s how they story tell and that was actually part of the lesson.
Eric Cross (26:12):
So now I need to go back and extend their time that I’ve given them for <laugh> that project. I wanna come back to kind of, since we’re on this topic about why this is also an equity issue. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. So we were talking about language, you touched on this a bit, and we were talking about integrating into science, but can we go a little bit further into how this integrated approach maybe can benefit English language learners in particular? And maybe anything else that’s related to equity that comes to mind.
Dr. Susan Gomez Zwiep (26:40):
So there’s a couple of layers of the equity issue. The most tangible and clear is student access. If we wait until students develop English proficiency to allow them access to quality science learning, we lose a tremendous number of students that could not only could they benefit from science, we could benefit from their entering this science conversation. And I was at a university and I was in a college of natural sciences and we were dedicated to increasing the diversity of the faculty. And it was a struggle ’cause the number of Ph.D. science ed or biology or chemistry academics that come from marginalized populations is very, very small. And it’s not by accident. You know, the number of students that make it into the next level, that make it into college prep courses, that make it into STEM majors, that complete STEM majors and go on to either careers or advanced degrees narrows at every possible step.
Dr. Susan Gomez Zwiep (28:01):
And so the equity issue is really one of access. And as basic as that is, it’s the easiest to solve. So that’s the first layer of equity. But the second issue around equity is how we engage these students once they’re in this space. Do we make it possible for them to see themselves as a scientist or an engineer? Are we creating learning experiences that not only allow them to use all the sense-making resources that they have, but do we make them feel like they’re valuable and useful in that space? Because there’s a lot of people that will say, I could be successful as a scientist, but I’m not willing to give up who I am in order to do that. And that’s a real thing. There’s a lot of research about like, why are they leaving? Like why, you know, is it because they’re not able?
Dr. Susan Gomez Zwiep (29:05):
Is it because they don’t see themselves as being capable? And now I think we’re looking at this as a different issue. It’s not that students don’t see themselves as capable and not that they’re not achieving. They see the cost that it will take to enter these fields and essentially not be able to be their full selves. So that’s the second equity issue. And in both cases we lose. As a society, we lose. We lose access to the full range of human resources that we have, and we lose access to their unique perspectives that they would bring to real problems facing us. It’s like all hands-on deck. We need to stop making it too difficult to participate in the conversation and we need to be more inclusive about how we invite these other perspectives and how we respect and utilize their ways of sense-making. That may not be Western science ways that we have in our books now, but hopefully those science materials are gonna change and we’re gonna start to see other ways of sense-making and other people involved in the stories that we tell around science concepts.
Eric Cross (30:29):
And just to be clear, this practice in integration, while it lifts up equity for marginalized or underrepresented groups or students who are emerging bilinguals or students who typically we don’t see representation of, this approach also benefits native speakers as well. Correct?
Dr. Susan Gomez Zwiep (30:47):
Yeah. And there’s actually a group of native speakers that come from text poor homes. It’s typical in underserved communities. Poor people living in poverty that may be native English speakers. They may not be marginalized populations. But they don’t have access to like text. And so that’s another group altogether that needs linguistic support. And then once you have all voices in the room contributing, everybody benefits because now the conversation, the building understanding conversation we’re having or the sense-making conversation that we’re having has everybody involved. And we all benefit from that.
Eric Cross (31:33):
And we see, I think one of the benefits about a country like the U.S., is we have such a heterogeneous group of people. And when we’re moving in the same direction, we’re all coming to the same problem, but from different perspectives and we’re able to come up with more innovative and novel solutions to them. And that’s kind of what I’m hearing is like as we generate scientists that are all coming from different backgrounds, we’re gonna be able to solve future problems, current problems a lot more effectively because nobody has a monopoly on perspective. Nobody has a monopoly on knowledge or the fastest way to do something or the best way to do something.
Dr. Susan Gomez Zwiep (32:11):
Right. Right. And traditionally we really have privileged particular experiences, particular ways of sense-making particular linguistic registers. And if we could just kind of put that privileged ways aside and open up space for everybody to feel like they have a voice, I think the next generation could change the world. I think they could solve some real problems. I’m truly hopeful that they would see themselves not just as capable, but as necessary in these pursuits.
Eric Cross (32:50):
So what does it actually look like today to do this work in instruction well? So to integrate the science, to integrate literacy, to take the benefits of the things that we’ve been talking about. What are some practical things that educators could do to get started, whether it’s in early, you know, K5 or middle school or even high school.
Dr. Susan Gomez Zwiep (33:13):
So I will say, I’m gonna kind of separate ’cause in the elementary space, students are primarily developing literacy in multiple languages. The language of the classroom, typically English, home language, languages, they may be multilingual. In the secondary setting where students tend to have developed social language in some language, it’s a little different. So I’m gonna kind of separate those two. So for elementary spaces where teachers tend to teach multiple things, I recommend that you get a partner. Don’t do this work alone. You cannot do this work alone. I mean you can, but it’s very frustrating and not nearly as much fun. So you really wanna take a look at what is the science that kids are going to be engaged in. Because when we look at science first and build language development around it, the experience tends to be more authentic and organic.
Dr. Susan Gomez Zwiep (34:18):
And what we used to do is we used to, like when we were talking about the science, we’d monitor the language we were using and then use that to say these are the registers. This is the language that we use when we were thinking about this. So if students are gonna use this, these are the scaffolds they’re gonna need. ‘Cause to do it, well, to do it efficiently, the scaffolds need to be specific to the science learning. So if we’re doing cause and effect, those are specific linguistic scaffolds that are different than if, say we’re doing model and systems and systems models, those are a whole other slew of scaffolds. And so you wanna be really tending to, what is the science being discussed and what is the language that kids are going to use and build scaffolds around it.
Dr. Susan Gomez Zwiep (35:10):
And then you also wanna think about what is the social language? What are the experience that kids will have either in words or pictures that I can leverage in this space. And then you wanna do that for the arc of the unit and slowly increase sophistication around those linguistic supports, as well as the science learning. But if kids have social language and they’re now in, there’s a group we call long-term English learners who have not been reclassified way beyond what the typical reclassification is. And that actually is important to think about because if you think about the kinder group, the group of kindergartners that enter a school when they’re five or six, those kids are going to go from grade to grade to grade. And as students develop proficiency, will get reclassified and they move out of this group that we’re still calling English learners.
Dr. Susan Gomez Zwiep (36:10):
So by the time you get to like seventh, eighth, ninth grade, if they’re still students in that category, they have very different needs on average than the group we started with. Often when we talk about secondary or these long-term English learners, we can leverage social language a lot more, but have to build the scaffolds more carefully around, for lack of a better word, the more academic content transferring that those social nonverbal language into more sophisticated forms. I think in any setting, you wanna utilize your resources. If I’m in a secondary space and I have a language development teacher and I’m not talking to her or him or they, that’s a problem. You need to go talk to the other people that have these same kids and talk to them about, how are you engaging in language, what are you doing?
Dr. Susan Gomez Zwiep (37:07):
Because you know, you could actually have a lesson, maybe this is a lesson about energy and you’re using a model and the kids are creating an initial model. And over in ELD land, they’re doing some linguistic supports. They’re working on some forms and functions of language. You could talk about the catapult, you could talk about the solar heater. You could use the context of the science conversation, which has a whole bunch of tangible experiences. You know, there’s the solar heater in front of you. I don’t need to keep it all in my head ’cause it’s in front of me and we can point to things and talk about things by manipulating the materials. And then I can take all of that and my ELD partner can use that as context when available. But it takes collaboration, but it’s collaboration well spent. And it’s more challenging in the initial phases of the collaboration. Once you kind of the get into the groove, it becomes a lot easier.
Eric Cross (38:16):
The meta of this, as we talk about integrating science and literacy is, and this is great advice, but it’s basically integrate your science teachers with your English teachers and co-plan and do this work together. It’s a force multiplier. One, you’re both, you’re getting two specialists together. It also, I’m just listening to just the parallels. It also resembles what you actually do in the STEM fields of collaboration working together to problem-solve, and you’re modeling for your students what you want to happen. And if I was an administrator listening to this, someone who had control, like master schedules and things like that, there also needs to be space created for these teachers to talk to each other and plan and do all these other things to kind of maybe come up with like interdisciplinary units or even just meet and begin the conversation. It just seems like such great advice.
Dr. Susan Gomez Zwiep (39:07):
Yeah. We’re professionals. We have academic degrees and credentials and experience in the classroom and yet more often than not, we leave it to the students in the seats to make the connections between my class and the class they go to next. And that’s not fair. We need to be talking to each other. So if we’re talking about argumentation, argumentation in science and argumentation in ELA and argumentation in math–we’re not even talking about the same thing. I mean, cognitively we’re talking about taking some evidence and creating a claim and supporting it, but what we mean by evidence is very different in the different disciplines. What counts as more convincing evidence changes. And yet we assume that because we say evidence in one class, the kids know what we’re talking about. And the kids are sitting there going, which one is this? Which evidence are you talking about? Because last period it was something else. And so I think we also need to really consider who’s in the best position to clarify the connections and the integration because we leave it to kids more often than not right now.
Eric Cross (40:19):
I agree. Just having those conversations and defining your terms and agreeing on them just to make it easier for students. ‘Cause you’re right, they are left to make those connections or bridge the gaps. And when you have an education system for many schools, I think most of us, it’s still pretty siloed. You’re still kind of like, especially when you’re in secondary, it’s we’re doing this or even elementary, different times of the day you do different subjects, versus the way that we experience life itself or even our professions. We’re actually integrating science and math and reading and writing throughout the day, and ebbs and flows going back and forth. And without making those explicit connections, we’re leaving a lot of things to chance, hoping that the learning’s there in such a valuable moment. Before we go, I’m wondering if you have a parting message for listeners about the topic of integrating science and literacy. You’ve already said so many amazing things, but you have the platform speaking to educators and folks out there. What would you wanna say to them?
Dr. Susan Gomez Zwiep (41:18):
This is not an easy endeavor. The system that we operate in does not make this effort easy, but it is worth it. It is worth it to the kids in our classrooms. It is worth it to the building of a scientific community and a scientifically literate populace. It’s important to solving problems in the future. It’s important to have kids feel like regardless of how they say things, that they belong in a classroom. If we can relax the sort of linguistic demands on kids and let them enter science learning in a way that allows them to use all their resources and they’re curious, they can really leverage both areas in a way that they don’t do individually. It’s really hard to think about what it is I’m trying to say if I’m worried about how I have to say it. And so we really need to think about, when are those times that we’re gonna let kids just tell us what it is that they’re excited about and when is it that we’re going to help them craft a more formalized language around those ideas. Right now we do a really good job at that second half. We need to do better at the first.
Eric Cross (42:46):
Susan, thank you so much for joining us today and for sharing your expertise and your wisdom and your passion for serving the students and for bringing everybody to the table through language and through science. We really appreciate it and the listeners will too.
Dr. Susan Gomez Zwiep (43:03):
Thank you so much. This is my favorite topic.
Eric Cross (43:06):
Thanks so much for listening to my conversation with Dr. Susan Gomez Zwiep, senior science educator and staff advocate at BSCS Science Learning. And please remember to subscribe to Science Connections so that you don’t miss any of the episodes in this exciting third season. And while you’re there, we’d really appreciate it if you can leave us a review. It’ll help more listeners find the show. Next time on the show, we’re going to continue exploring the how and why of integrating science and literacy instruction.
Speaker 3 (43:35):
When we interview scientists, they spend a lot of their time reading the work of other scientists and writing their findings, writing grant proposals, presenting at conferences. A huge part of the work of a scientist is not just at a bench conducting experiments, but even if you’re conducting experiments, you’re using your literacy processes to think about what you’re seeing in your experiment.
Eric Cross (43:57):
That’s next time on Science Connections. Thanks so much for listening.
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Meet the guests
Susan Gomez Zwiep began her career in science education as a middle school science teacher in Los Angeles where she spent over 12 years working in urban schools. Prior to joining BSCS, Susan worked at California State University, Long Beach as a Professor of Science Education.
Susan has also worked as a Regional Director for the K-12 Alliance, providing high-quality professional development in science and mathematics for K12 educators, including the CA NGSS Early Implementer Initiative. Susan consistently works toward establishing equitable access for all students to rigorous, inquiry-based science instruction and supporting teachers in their journey to become advocates for students, science education, and their own professional development.
About Science Connections
Welcome to Science Connections! Science is changing before our eyes, now more than ever. So…how do we help kids figure that out? We will bring on educators, scientists, and more to discuss the importance of high-quality science instruction. In this episode, hear from our host Eric Cross about his work engaging students as a K-8 science teacher.
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Committed to reading equity
We believe that all students have the right to read complex texts and engage in rich classroom discussions. They should also see themselves reflected and experience new worlds through reading.
This commitment guides our text selection, unique artwork, and dedication to reaching every student where they are.
Text selection
Texts in the Amplify ELA curriculum cover a wide range of topics, themes, and genres, with differentiated supports that ensure that all students can work through each reading and lesson. Taken as a whole, the texts show students a diverse picture of the world, while fostering a lifelong love of reading.
In the Liberty & Equality unit, students reflect on the harrowing journeys and avenues to freedom that enslaved African-Americans were forced to forge.
Students read A Raisin in the Sun, a play that focuses on the impact of poverty and racial tensions on family relationships and identity within an African-American family.
In the Summer of the Mariposas unit, students dive into a retelling of the Odyssey through a contemporary Hispanic lens as they explore sibling and extended-family relationships.
In the Perspectives and Narrative unit, students explore a coming of age moment for an adolescent daughter of immigrant parents.
In the Red Scarf Girl and Narrative unit, students learn about a key historic moment in Asian and world history, while making connections to relatable themes like authority figures imposing rules on children, and family and peer loyalties standing at odds.
In the Mysteries & Investigations unit, many of the texts present an ethnically and culturally diverse group of characters, including many pre-teen or teen protagonists rebelling against authority, navigating their relationships with their peers and families, and figuring out their unique identities.
Created with diverse perspectives
With our new illustrations, time spent in our classrooms will feel relevant and relatable to every student. We’ve brought together an art team with unique perspectives and visual styles so that their diversity can shine along with the
complex texts in our curriculum, and illuminate their relationship with our literature. Everyone deserves to see themselves as the hero of a story. It is our hope that our students will find themselves within our program, and will be ever more curious in their learning, and engaged in their reading.
Paige Womack
Dive into the world of Mysteries &
Investigations with Dr. Womack,
the illustrator who may have once
become a scientist…
Tre McClendon
Meet Tre, a seeker and traveller that became homies Fredrick Douglass through illustrating his narrative for our program…
Jackie Pierson
There’s no one way to be a maker, and Jackie certainly has made a lot of things. Check out the weird and mysterious world of her miniatures…
Elizabeth Dantzler
She’s been drawing characters and comics ever since middle school. Now see the drama of Edel’s work in the mythos of the Greeks…
Caroline Hadilaksono
Travel through countries and narratives with Caroline, as she shares her delicate watercolors for illustrating the hero’s journey…
Patrick Mahony
The haunting work that Patrick creates will leave you feeling a sense of melancholy and longing, but not without hope for the future…
Edel Ferri
She’s been drawing characters and comics ever since middle school. Now see the drama of Edel’s work in the mythos of the Greeks…
Eddie Pena
As a latino American, Eddie is an illustrator, a father, and a teacher. He is working in collaboration with Poetry in America to use his heritage as inspiration…
Tory Novikova
Listen to a word from Tory, the Art Director at Amplify, on how the vision
was set for the project and how she brought the team together that would get to illustrate ELA…
Fanart
Here is a library of all the inspiring art that our beloved fans have submitted for our program. Do you or your students have a favorite literary character from our program? Send us your fanart to be shared with our community here!
Introduction
Amplify Education, Inc. (“Amplify” or “we”) recognizes the importance of protecting the privacy and security of your personal information. This App Privacy Policy describes our practices in connection with information that we may collect through your use of the Cell Simulator iOS application (the “App”).
This App Privacy Policy describes Amplify’s practices for handling non-personal information (e.g., site activity) in connection with the App.
Children. The App does not collect personal information from any users, including children under 13 years of age.
By using the App, you agree to the terms and conditions of this App Privacy Policy. If you do not agree to this App Privacy Policy, please discontinue your use of the App.
Collection of information
Amplify may collect information from you at various points, including the following:
App activity information. When you access and interact with the App, we and our Third Party Agents (as defined below) may collect certain information about those visits. For example, we or our Third Party Agents may receive and record information about your computing device, including potentially your IP address, a unique application identifier assigned to that copy of the App (the “App ID”), or other characteristics of the device hardware, operating system and configurations for that device. The App ID and any other persistent identifiers we collect will be used solely for the purpose of recording information about your usage of the App, and will not be used to collect information through any other product or service.
Notice and choice
Updates to App Privacy Policy; Choice. Amplify may modify this App Privacy Policy. Please look at the Last Revised Date at the top of this App Privacy Policy to see when this App Privacy Policy was last revised. Any changes to this App Privacy Policy will become effective when we post the revised App Privacy Policy to this URL: http://amplify.com/curriculum/cell-module/privacy. If you do not wish to be bound by the terms of the revised App Privacy Policy, you must discontinue your use of the App.
Location of Data. The App is hosted in and managed and controlled by us from the United States and is not intended to subject us to the laws or jurisdiction of any jurisdiction other than that of the United States. If you are a user located outside the United States, you understand and consent to having any personal information processed in the United States. United States data protection and other relevant laws may not be the same as those in your jurisdiction.
Linked Services.The App may be linked to sites operated by unaffiliated companies. Amplify is not responsible for the privacy practices of unaffiliated companies, and once you leave the App via a link, you are subject to the applicable privacy policy of the unaffiliated service.
Use and disclosure
We may use and/or disclose any information we collect from you for the following purposes and as described elsewhere in this App Privacy Policy:
To provide and manage the App. We use the usage information we collect from you to provide the App and features to you, including to measure and improve its services and features, and to personalize your experience by delivering relevant content. We may also use and disclose aggregate or anonymous data about your use of and activity in the App to assist us in this regard and for any other purpose.
To improve our products and services. We may use your usage information for our internal business purposes, such as data analysis, developing new products and services, enhancing the App, and improving our services. To share with our affiliated education companies. Amplify may share your usage information with Amplify’s affiliated education companies for the purposes described in this App Privacy Policy.
To allow Third Party Agents to assist us. We may engage third party service providers, agents and partners (“Third Party Agents”) to perform functions on our behalf, such as analytics. We may disclose your usage information to such Third Party Agents to enable them to assist us in these efforts, for the purposes described in this App Privacy Policy.
To protect the rights of Amplify and our users. There may be instances when Amplify may disclose your usage information, in situations where Amplify has a good faith belief that such disclosure is necessary or appropriate in order to: (i) protect, enforce, or defend the legal rights, privacy, safety, operations, or property of Amplify, our parents, subsidiaries or affiliates or our or their employees, agents and contractors (including enforcement of our agreements, including our terms of use); (ii) protect the rights, safety, privacy, security or property of users of the Site or others; (iii) protect against fraud or for risk management purposes; (iv) comply with the law or legal process, including laws outside your country of residence; (v) respond to requests from public and government authorities, including those outside your country of residence; or (vi) allow us to pursue available remedies or limit the damages that we may sustain.
To complete a merger or sale of assets. If Amplify sells all or part of its business or makes a sale or transfer of its assets or is otherwise involved in a merger, transfer or other disposition of all or part of its business, assets or stock (including in connection with any bankruptcy or similar proceedings), Amplify may transfer your information to the party or parties involved in the transaction.
Security
Amplify uses commercially reasonable administrative, technical, personnel and physical measures to safeguard information in its possession against loss, theft and unauthorized use, disclosure or modification.
Sensitive information
We ask that you not send or disclose to us any personal and/or sensitive information (e.g., name, address, social security numbers, information related to racial or ethnic origin, health, or criminal background) on or through the App or otherwise.
Contact us
If you have questions about this App Privacy Policy, please contact us at:
Email: privacy@amplify.com
Mail: Amplify, 55 Washington St., Ste 900, Brooklyn, NY, 11201 Attn: General Counsel
Website Privacy Policy
Last Modified: February 2026
Update: February 2, 2026: This Privacy Policy has been updated to address additional rights for individuals in the European Union/UK.
Below is the Website Privacy Policy for the amplify.com site (“Privacy Policy”). For purposes of clarity and as further outlined below, this Privacy Policy does not apply to student data. You can visit this page to read about the principles and policy governing student data collected and maintained on behalf of our school customers.
We advise you to read this Privacy Policy in its entirety, including the jurisdiction-specific provisions in the appendix. Our Notice at Collection for California Residents is available in the Notice for our California Customers.
Who We Are / What This Privacy Policy Covers
Amplify Education, Inc. (“Amplify”) recognizes the importance of protecting the privacy and security of your personal information. This Privacy Policy describes our practices in connection with information that we may collect through your use of this website (the “Site”).
This Privacy Policy does not apply to Amplify’s handling of:
- student data or other information collected from users of Amplify’s products that support classroom instruction and learning, which are governed by our Customer Privacy Policy.
- staff or applicant data that we process in accordance with our staff or applicant privacy notice, respectively.
If you have any question as to what legal agreement or privacy policy controls the collection and use of your information, please contact us using information below in the Contact Us section.
This Privacy Policy is incorporated into and is subject to our Website Terms of Use, which governs your use of the Site.
Our Role: We are the controller of all personal information (as defined below) that we receive through our Site and can be reached by email at privacy@amplify.com or by mail at Amplify Education, Inc., 55 Washington St.#800, Brooklyn, NY, 11201.
1. What personal information do we collect?
When you visit and / or interact with our Site, we may collect the following information about you that, alone or in combination, could be used to identify you or your device (“personal information”):
- Contact Information, such as name, district / school name, professional affiliation, title / role, email address, shipping address, address and phone number.
- Account Information, such as customer user login and password.
- Demographic Information, such as age and gender.
- Information You Submit, such as information voluntarily provided on message boards, feedback sections, and other public areas of the Site.
- Site Activity Information, which is collected when you access and interact with the Site, we and our Service Providers (as defined below) may collect certain information about those visits. For example, we or our Service Providers may receive and record information about your computer and browser, including your IP address, browser type, and other software or hardware information. If you access the Site from a mobile or other device, we may collect a unique device identifier assigned to that device, or other characteristics of the device hardware, operating system and configurations for that device. On certain pages of the Site, we may use third party tools to help us look at mouse movements, clicks, keystrokes, data or text entered, and the pages you visit.
- Location Information, such as state, country and / or zip code, which we use to help us customize your experience, as well as to help us facilitate your privacy rights.
- Audio, electronic, visual, or similar information: such as customer service interactions, call recordings, chat transcripts, files you attach, and email, text, or other correspondence.
If you make a purchase through our online store, you may provide payment and other information directly to our third party e-commerce platform to complete your purchase.
We ask that you not send us, and you not disclose, any government identifiers (such as social security numbers) or information related to racial or ethnic origin, health, or criminal background on or through the Site or otherwise.
2. Where/How do we collect personal information?
Amplify may collect personal information directly from you at various points, including the following:
- Product Information and Newsletters. When you submit a request to obtain information about our products, services or other informational material or subscribe to one of our newsletters, you may be asked to submit information such as name, professional affiliation, email address, company name, address and phone and details on your query or interests in our products and services. This information is collected to help us process your request.
- Customer Support. When you submit a form to contact our customer service, you may be asked to submit information such as name, e-mail, district, customer user login and password and details on your query. In addition, some features of our Site, such as our customer live chat functionality or other customer service systems may allow you to voluntarily provide personal information to us. This information is collected to help us process your request. Please only provide what is needed to facilitate the support request.
- Product Orders. If you use e-commerce areas of our Site to order our products, we request information from you on our order form. To purchase products through the Site, you must provide contact information (such as name and shipping address) and financial information (such as credit card number). This information is used for billing purposes and to fill your orders. We will also use this information to contact you to confirm your order or to inform you of any issues or delays.
- Registration. You may be asked to submit information to use certain parts of the Site (such as posting comments on certain areas of the Site), register for an event or webinar, or view restricted content that may be available on the Site. For instance, you may be asked to provide your name, email address and event or webinar-related preferences to help us process your registration or content request.
- Public Areas and Discussion Forums. Any information you share in public areas, such as message boards or feedback sections, becomes public. Please be careful about what you disclose and do not post any personal information that you expect to keep private.
- Contests and Sweepstakes. When we run a contest or sweepstakes relating to the Site or Amplify, it will be accompanied by a set of rules. The rules for each contest/sweepstakes will specify how the information gathered from you for your entry will be used and disclosed.
As you visit or use our Site, we may collect Site activity information through cookies and similar technologies.
- Cookies, Pixels, and Other Tracking Technologies. Cookies and other tracking technologies (such as pixels, beacons, and Adobe Flash technology) are small data files that are placed on your computer or mobile device when you visit a website. They allow the website or mobile app to remember your actions and preferences over a period of time. We use the following types of cookies:
- Strictly necessary cookies – These are cookies that are required for the operation of our Site. They include, for example, cookies that enable you to log into secure areas of our Site. These cookies are not generally stored beyond the browser session and are less likely to include personal information. This category of cookies cannot be disabled.
- Functionality Cookies – We use these cookies so that we recognize you on our Site and remember your previously selected preferences. These cookies are stored on your device between browsing sessions but expire after a pre-defined period. These cookies enable our Site to “recognize” you when you use our Site, including your preferences such as your preferred language , time, and location. A mix of first party (placed by us) and third-party cookies (placed by third parties) are used.
- Analytics Cookies – These cookies help us and our Service Providers compile statistics and analytics about users of the Site, including Site Activity Information. For example, we use Google Analytics to help us understand how users interact with the Platform. Google Analytics uses cookies to track your interactions with the Site, then collects that information and reports it to us. This information helps us improve the Site so that we can better serve you. To learn more about Google Analytics, visit https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/6004245?hl=en. If you wish, you can opt-out of Google Analytics by installing the Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on, available on https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout.
- Advertising Cookies – We use these cookies to collect information about your visit to our Site, the content you viewed, the links you followed and information about your browser, device, and your IP address. We sometimes share some limited aspects of this data with third parties for advertising purposes. We may also share Site Activity Information collected through cookies with our advertising partners. This means that when you visit another website, you may be shown advertising based on your browsing patterns on our Site.
For information on how to opt-out of these technologies, please see What Choices Do You Have? below.
- Social Plugins. Certain areas of our Site permit you to utilize social media functionality, such as the Facebook “Like” or Google “+1” buttons (“Social Plugins”). To use a Social Plugin, you must authorize the third-party provider of that Social Plugin, e.g. Facebook or Google, to access, collect, and/or disclose your information related to your use of that Social Plugin, subject to that company’s privacy policies, which may differ from this Privacy Policy. In addition, such providers may be able to collect information about you, including your activity on the Site, and they may notify your connections on their social networking platform about your use of the Site. Such services may also employ unique identifiers that allow your activity to be monitored across multiple websites for purposes of delivering more targeted advertising to you.
Amplify also receives information from other sources.
- Information from Other Sources. We may supplement any information we collect via this Site with information from publicly or commercially available sources.
3. How do we use personal information?
We may use any personal information and other information we collect from and about you for the following purposes and as described elsewhere in this Privacy Policy:
- To provide and manage the Site. We use the personal information we collect from and about you to provide the Site and features to you, including to measure and improve its services and features, to personalize your experience by delivering relevant content, to deliver marketing messages, to allow you to comment on content, to provide you with customer support, and to respond to inquiries. We may also use and disclose aggregate or anonymous data about your use of and activity on the Site to assist us in this regard and for any other purpose.
- To contact you. Amplify may periodically send promotional materials (e.g., newsletters) or notifications related to the Site and to Amplify’s business to the contact information you provided to us at registration.
- To improve our products and services. We may use your personal information for our business purposes, such as data analysis, audits, developing new products and services, enhancing the Site, improving our services, identifying usage trends, and determining the effectiveness of our promotional campaigns.
- For marketing and advertising. We may use your personal information to help us market our products to you or your school district.
4. To whom do we disclose personal information?
We may disclose any personal information and other information we collect from and about you for the following purposes and as described elsewhere in this Privacy Policy:
- To share with our affiliated education companies. Amplify may share your personal information with Amplify’s affiliated education companies for the purposes described in this Privacy Policy.
- To allow service providers to assist us. We may engage third party service providers, agents and partners (“Service Providers”) to perform functions on our behalf, such as analytics, credit card processing, shipping or stocking orders and providing customer service. We may disclose your personal information to such Service Providers to enable them to assist us in these efforts.
- To allow our marketing and advertising partners to assist us. We may engage marketing and advertising partners to help us market and advertise our products and services, including via digital ads sent in connection with your visit to the Site. We may disclose Site Activity information, as well as contact information and other aggregate insights to such partners to enable them to assist us in these efforts.
- To protect the rights of Amplify and our users. There may be instances when Amplify may disclose your personal information, in situations where Amplify has a good faith belief that such disclosure is necessary or appropriate in order to: (i) protect, enforce, or defend the legal rights, privacy, safety, operations, or property of Amplify, our parents, subsidiaries or affiliates or our or their employees, agents and contractors (including enforcement of our agreements, including our terms of use); (ii) protect the rights, safety, privacy, security or property of users of the Site or others; (iii) protect against fraud or for risk management purposes; (iv) comply with the law or legal process, including laws outside your country of residence; (v) respond to requests from public and government authorities, including those outside your country of residence; or (vi) allow us to pursue available remedies or limit the damages that we may sustain.
- To complete a merger or sale of assets. If Amplify sells all or part of its business or makes a sale or transfer of its assets or is otherwise involved in a merger, transfer or other disposition of all or part of its business, assets or stock (including in connection with any bankruptcy or similar proceedings), Amplify may transfer your personal information to the party or parties involved in the transaction.
5. What rights and choices do you have?
Opt-out of Marketing Communications. If you want to stop receiving promotional materials from Amplify, you can follow the unsubscribe instructions at the bottom of each email. There are certain service notification emails that you may not opt-out of, such as notifications of changes to the Site or policies. If you have additional questions, please contact us using information below in the Contact Us section.
Opt-of Cookies and Similar Tracking Technologies. There are a few ways to opt out or delete cookies.
- On Your Browser. Most browsers are initially set to accept cookies, but your browser may permit you to change your settings to notify you of a cookie being set or updated, or to block cookies altogether. Please consult the “Help” section of your browser for more information. Please note that by blocking any or all cookies you may not have access to certain features, content or personalization that may be available through the Site. Please also note that you must opt out separately on each device (including each web browser on each device) that you use to access our Site if you wish to opt out, and if you clear your cookies or if you use a different browser or device, you will need to renew your opt-out preferences.
- Interest-Based Advertising. Some advertisers and marketing companies participate in the self-regulatory programs of the Digital Advertising Alliance (“DAA”) and European Interactive Digital Advertising Alliance (“eDAA”) in connection with online interest-based advertising. DAA and eDAA provide consumers with the ability to opt out of receiving interest-based advertising from their program participants at the following links:
What Rights Do You Have?
- Please see section 3 of our supplemental disclosures: “Additional U.S. State Privacy Law Rights” for information about your U.S. privacy rights
- Please see section 4 of our supplemental disclosures: “Notice for European Economic Area and United Kingdom Customers” for information about your EU/UK privacy rights.
6. Security
Amplify uses commercially reasonable administrative, technical, personnel and physical measures to safeguard personal information in its possession against loss, theft and unauthorized use, disclosure or modification.
7. Data retention / Deletion
We will retain your personal information for the period necessary to fulfill the purposes outlined in this Privacy Policy unless a longer retention period is required or allowed by law. Even after we have deleted your personal information from our systems, copies of some information from your account may remain viewable in some circumstances – where, for example, you have shared information with social media platforms and other unaffiliated services. We may also retain backup information related to your account on our servers for some time after cancellation for fraud detection or to comply with applicable law or our internal security policies. Because of the nature of caching technology, your account may not be instantly inaccessible to others, and there may be a delay in the removal of the content from elsewhere on the Internet and from search engines.
8. Data Storage and Transfers
We are a United States Company, and our servers are hosted, managed, and controlled by us in the United States. If you are outside of the United States, we use industry standards to protect your data when it leaves your country of residence and your data will always be protected in accordance with this Privacy Policy, Applicable Laws and our Agreement regardless of the storage location.
Additionally, where we transfer your personal information to service providers outside of the United Kingdom (UK), European Economic Area (EEA), or other region that offers similar protections, we use specific appropriate safeguards to contractually obligate such service providers to protect personal information in accordance with Amplify’s commitment to privacy and security and applicable data protection laws.
If you have questions or wish to obtain more information about the international transfer of your personal information or the implemented safeguards, please contact us using the contact information below.
9. External third-party services
The Site may be linked to sites operated by unaffiliated companies, and may carry advertisements or offer content, functionality, games, newsletters, contests or sweepstakes, or applications developed and maintained by unaffiliated companies. Amplify is not responsible for the privacy practices of unaffiliated companies, and once you leave the Site via a link or enable an unaffiliated service, you are subject to the applicable privacy policy of the unaffiliated service.
10. Updates to this policy
Amplify may modify this Privacy Policy. Please look at the Last Revised Date at the top of this Privacy Policy to see when this Privacy Policy was last revised. Any changes to this Privacy Policy will become effective when we post the revised Privacy Policy on the Site. If you do not wish to be bound by the terms of the revised Privacy Policy, you must discontinue your use of the Site.
11. Contact us
If you have questions about this Privacy Policy, please contact us at:
Email: privacy@amplify.com
Mail: Amplify Education, Inc.
55 Washington St.#800
Brooklyn, NY, 11201
Phone: (800) 823-1969
Attn: General Counsel
Appendix – Supplemental Disclosures
1. Notice for our California Customers
We retain your personal information for as long as you are an active user of our Site or continue to have an account with us, and in accordance with our legal obligations (which may require us to hold information to provide financial and other reporting and to defend against potential claims). If you are a California resident, please see below for information about your rights pursuant to California law.
Personal Information We Collect |
How We Use Personal Information |
| Contact Information |
|
| Account Information |
|
| Payment Information |
|
| Information You Submit |
|
| Site Activity Information |
|
| Location Information |
|
| Inferences |
|
Some of the information described above may be considered “sensitive” under the laws of certain jurisdictions (including payment information and account login credentials (“Sensitive Information”). Whether information is Sensitive Information will depend on the laws of your jurisdiction. We only use Sensitive Information, such as payment information and account credentials for necessary or reasonably expected purposes – specifically, to provide you with our Services (i.e., fulfill purchases and to allow account logins).
Shine the Light
California’s Shine the Light law (Civil Code § 1798.83) permits California residents to request certain information regarding our disclosure of certain categories of personal information to third parties for their own direct marketing purposes in the preceding calendar year. We do not share personal information, as defined by California’s Shine the Light law, with third parties for their own direct marketing purposes.
Notice of Financial Incentive
As part of our services, there may be opportunities for you to complete surveys and questionnaires. As an incentive for completing the survey or questionnaire, you can voluntarily provide your personal information, which in turn enters you into a raffle drawing or enables us to provide you with other benefits, discounts, offers, or deals that may constitute a financial incentive under California law (“Financial Incentive”). The categories of personal information required for us to provide the Financial Incentives include: contact information and any other information that you choose to provide when you complete the survey.
Participation is voluntary and you can opt out at any time before your survey is complete.
The value of the personal information we collect in connection with our Financial Incentives is equivalent to the value of the benefit offered.
2. Additional U.S. State Privacy Law Rights
Residents of certain U.S. states have the following rights, regarding your personal information (each of which are subject to various exceptions and limitations):
- Access. You have the right to request, up to two times every 12 months, that we disclose to you the categories of personal information collected about you, the categories of sources from which the personal information is collected, the categories of personal information sold or shared, the business or commercial purpose for collecting, selling, or sharing the personal information, the categories of third parties with whom personal information was shared, and the specific pieces of personal information collected about you.
- Correct. You have the right to request that we correct inaccurate personal information collected from you.
- Deletion. You can request that we delete your personal information that we maintain about you.
- Opt-out (Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information). Under several U.S. state privacy laws, consumers have the right to opt-out of the “sale” of their personal information (defined very broadly to include situations where we provide personal information to partners who provide advertising services to us) and the “sharing” of personal information in connection with the display of targeted advertising across third party websites. While we do not sell your personal information, we do share it in connection with our advertising efforts. Please also note that we do not knowingly sell or share the Personal Information of minors under 16 years of age.
We also honor the Global Privacy Control, a browser-based opt-out signal. We do not respond to other browser-based signals that do not meet applicable state law requirements, which may include older Do Not Track signals.
- No Discrimination. You have the right not to be discriminated against for exercising these rights.
- Appeals. You have a right to appeal decisions concerning your ability to exercise your consumer rights.
- Submission of Requests. You may exercise the above rights by emailing us at privacy@amplify.com. Note that we may deny certain requests, or fulfill a request only in part, based on our legal rights and obligations. For example, we may retain personal information as permitted by law, such as for tax or other record keeping purposes, to maintain an active account, and to process transactions and facilitate customer requests.
- Authorized Agent. You may designate an authorized agent to make a request on your behalf. When submitting the request, please ensure the authorized agent identifies himself/herself/itself as an authorized agent and can show written permission from you to represent you. We may contact you directly to confirm that you have authorized the agent to act on your behalf or confirm your identity.
- Verification. Whether you submit a request directly on your own behalf, or through an authorized agent, we will take reasonable steps to verify your identity prior to responding to your requests. The verification steps will vary depending on the sensitivity of the personal information and whether you have an account with us.
3. Notice for European Economic Area and United Kingdom Customers
As detailed at the beginning of our Privacy Policy (under the section titled “Our Role”), Amplify acts as a controller with respect to personal information collected as you interact with our Site.
Lawful Basis for Processing
We rely on the following lawful bases for our processing activities:
- Consent;
- We obtain your consent to collect and process device and usage data via cookies on our Site to understand how individuals use our Site and to help us measure the effectiveness of our advertising and marketing campaigns.
- Pursuant to a contract with the user of our Site;
- We process all categories of personal information that we collect to provide and manage our Site, including payment processing, where this is required in order for us to perform our obligations under our contract with you.
- To comply with our legal obligations;
- We process all categories of personal information that we collect to ensure the safety and security of our Site where we are complying with security requirements under data protection and cyber and information security law.
- We process all categories of personal information that we collect to comply with our legal obligations which includes, for example, to access, retain or share certain personal information where we receive a valid request from a government body, law enforcement body, judicial body regulator or similar, to deal with legal claims and prospective legal claims, and to ensure we are complying with applicable laws.
- When we have a legitimate interest in doing so, which is not outweighed by the risks to the individual. We rely on our legitimate interest to process all categories of personal information:
- to provide, manage, and improve the Site where such activities are not strictly required under our contract, including personalizing your experience on the Site.
- to ensure the safety and security of our Site where this is important but not required under the data protection law or cyber and information security laws.
- to respond to queries or otherwise communicate with you in relation to our Site and the operation of our business where this is not strictly required under a contract with you.
- internal research and certain marketing purposes (e.g. to periodically send newsletters and other promotional materials), which will not be based on Student Data or directed to K–12 students.
Your Data Subject Rights
If you are located in the EEA/UK, you have the following rights, subject to certain exceptions:
- Right of access: You have the right to ask us for confirmation on whether we are processing your personal information and access to that personal information.
- Right to correction: You have the right to have your personal information corrected.
- Right to erasure: You have the right to ask us to delete your personal information.
- Right to withdraw consent: You have the right to withdraw consent that you have provided.
- Right to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority: You have the right to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority.
- Right to restriction of processing: You have the right to request the limiting of our processing under limited circumstances.
- Right to data portability: You have the right to receive the personal information that you have provided to us, in a structured, commonly used, and machine-readable format, and you have the right to transmit that information to another controller, including to have it transmitted directly, where technically feasible.
- Right to object: You have the right to object to our processing of your personal information
To exercise any of these rights, contact us as set forth in the section entitled “Contact Us” above and specify which European privacy right you intend to exercise. We may require additional information from you to allow us to confirm your identity. Please note that we store information as necessary to fulfill the purposes for which it was collected, and may continue to retain and use the information even after a data subject request for purposes of our legitimate interests, including to comply with our legal obligations, resolve disputes, prevent fraud, and enforce our agreements.
Complaints
If you have any issues with our compliance, you have the right to lodge a complaint with an EEA or UK supervisory authority. We would, however, appreciate the opportunity to address your concerns before you approach a data protection regulator, and would welcome you directing an inquiry first to us. To do so, please contact us by email at privacy@amplify.com or by mail at Amplify Education, Inc., 55 Washington St.#800, Brooklyn, NY, 11201.