Dr. Alexa Tzanova

Upper School science teacher

Columbia University, B.A.

Brown University, Ph.D.

Upper School science teacher Dr. Alexa Tzanova’s backup plan if she wasn’t going to be a science teacher was to be a detective, a la Sherlock Holmes. After speaking with Tzanova, that makes perfect sense. “I love coming up with solutions and coming up with the answer based on these clues,” she said  “It’s like science. There is a very clear cause and effect. You can know the outcome of something if you know the rules.”

Tzanova hopes her students gain an appreciation for the world around them and recognize the inherent logic that underpins its complexity. After a unit on geology, one student noticed how the rain deposited the pebbles from the finer grains while taking a walk. “I love that a-ha moment. He went about his daily life, but now he realized that a process controlled the distribution of materials. Even though he wasn’t there when the storm occurred, he understood what the storm looked like. Like a detective, he solved the puzzle by examining what happened afterward.”

Tzanova believes her students know far more than they realize just by inhabiting the world around them. Rather than lead her students down a predictable path, she wants them to come up with their own answers and solutions by heightening their own powers of observation. She said the students may not understand that ice is less dense than water, but they have witnessed ice cubes floating in a glass. “I’m giving them scientific terms behind things they already know. They get a boost of confidence, and they begin to trust that they can figure out the unknown based on what they already know. Their random guesses don’t have to be random.”

And if you think environmental science has nothing to do with baking bread, Tzanova will set you straight. To her, it’s the most natural thing in the world. In teaching a unit on decomposers and biochemical cycles, the class mixes water and flour and then allows nature to take its course as the airborne natural yeast begins to ferment the flour. Each student created a sourdough starter for bread that they popped into an oven to bake mini-loaves and then enjoyed as a treat in class.

One of her favorite lessons to teach freshmen is the impact of the wolves’ reintroduction into Yellowstone National Park after they were eradicated in the early 1900s. Over time, the small pack of wolves transformed the park; trees returned, as did the songbirds, and the course of the rivers changed because the vegetation wasn’t being overgrazed. Tzanova uses this example as a metaphor for how a small group can impact the larger community. It is a lovely reminder to her freshmen that they can make a profound difference in the broader KO community. And they definitely do.

Favorite hobby: hiking with my dogs, baking bread

Favorite food: sushi

Favorite movie: Ratatouille

Favorite music: cheesy ‘80s pop