The Fellow/Mentor parternship within the Kenan program is extremely beneficial for all parties.  Most partnerships are within STEM fields, since this is the orginal focus of the Kenan Fellows Program.  My partnership was with NC DPI, so it’s a little different, but the benefits are the same.

As fellows, we gain skills and connections from our partnerships.  Fellows are participating in new research that they can use in their lessons, and learning new techniques that they can pass on to students, such as propagation of venus fly traps in one partnership.  Having fellows exposed to this research and techniques puts them on the cutting edge as teachers– having current knowledge about a field from real-life experiences instead of text books will increase the enthusiasm and the accuracy of their teaching.  Having students exposed to the products, practices, and processes of each of these fellowships is so enlightening.  Having students design the labels for muscadine grape smoothies, for example, could spark a kid’s interest in marketing, graphic design, or sustainable agriculture.  In non-STEM partnerships, such as with DPI, fellows have the opportunity of a connection at the state level.  All teachers are affected by state mandates.  Fellows get to have an effect on the mandates themselves through the projects and partnerships they create.

It’s not just teachers and students that benefit.  There are advantages for the businesses and institutions that are our partners.  Students are their future work force.  The work that fellows are doing can push a student in a certain direction within that work force, either by simply exposing them to a growing field they hadn’t heard of, or by allowing them hands-on experiences that they can build on in the future.  Kenan Fellow lessons can put a student on the road to biotechnology or microbiological research.  What could have easily been a ‘Careers in Sciences’ textbook sidebar with an outdated photograph, uninteresting or unattainable for many students, can now be a student’s reality for that day or that unit.

It’s mutually beneficial for North Carolina institutes and businesses to have their knowledge and skills imparted upon North Carolina students who will soon become our working citizens.  Teachers and school administrators often push for more parent involvement.  This gives a support structure for the present–who’s monitoring homework at home, who’s helping younger students with time management, who’s instilling values and consequences.  Kenan parternships create a support structure for these students’ and our state’s future– who those students will be in ten years, and helping NC fill the need for a skilled workforce with an ever-growing STEM inclination.