Seibert's own research on national and state standards gives her a perspective that she weaves into everyday teaching. She prefers the national science standards and recognizes their heavy influence on the development of standards at the state and district levels. They checked off many. In her pleasantly messy classroom, content standards are posted prominently. Performance standards are attached to student work everywhere.
Students usually work in groups with hands-on experiments in every unit.
Seibert limits her lecturing, preferring for students to discover information on their own. She moves around the room constantly to every group of students, always pushing them further, never telling them they are wrong. They might investigate, for example, how detergent helps remove grease from clothes, or how the strong scent of a flower benefits a plant or determine which season produces the most thunderstorms and why. When the school board voted against a later start time for secondary students because of opposition from parents, she urged her students to write letters to the newspaper based on their own research in the scientific literature. Teens need sleep and are more alert later in the day.