Describe at least one way you can connect your summer externship experience to your classroom curriculum. Also, share and respond to at least three posts.

My summer externship will have a major impact on my classroom. For my Kenan Fellowship lesson, I am creating a unit that will lead students through the engineering design process to create a presentation. My intent in my classroom, however, is to incorporate the process in many other aspects of my classroom.

We will be using the engineering design process extremely deliberately this year; this is something I have never done in the past. Because I work at a STEM school, we have this process posted in every classroom; however, very few of us as teachers outside of stem actually referred to it in our teaching last year. It is my intent to truly base PBL on this process this year, and to incorporate this into our classroom vocabulary.

Through my externship I have gained a much better understanding of the process, which will allow me to teach the steps to my students this year. I have seen it in use during engineering camp with the middle school students, I have discussed this manner of thinking with my mentors, former Kenan Fellows, and with engineers I have worked with over the summer. The time I spent in my externship will greatly benefit the paradigm shift I and my students will partake in this upcoming year!