Actually, the opportunity to work with a mentor in a field I was once part of and still avidly follow was the overriding impetus for my pursuing the Kenan Fellowship program.  I realize that my personal experience in research was growing sort of long in the tooth and this was an exciting opportunity to re-experience the lab environment and bring fresh perspectives to my classroom instruction.

The reality of the experience was, alas, a bit disappointing.  Not that we didn’t have some cool stuff to do while in the lab, but that I don’t think the host lab quite knew what to do with us.  And since there ere multiple fellows crowding the lab it became a bit like feeling underfoot.  I was able to leverage our experience into a visit with another lab that is run by a friend of mine, but the day-to-day was more limited than I had anticipated.

I think the best scenario for developing the lab/teacher relationship is a one lab/one teacher pairing.  I imagine the same sort of success was seen by the majority of fellows whose relationship was more one-on-one.  I know it takes a special type of patience and zeal to invite a teacher into your workplace or business or lab, and if I were on the other side I now know what and how I would plan to make the most of the relationship.  But I remain on the classroom side of the equation.  I have imbedded several of the curriculum ideas I had into my teaching, with some positive results – I can say that my perspective on the bacterial kingdom has really altered my approach to that part of the curriculum.  Biodiversity, anyone?

When you utter the words “professional development” around my school, and probably around yours, you get the exasperated eye roll and another grumble about time better spent in other pursuits.

It’s hard to put a finger on the definition of “Professional Development” that really provides a benefit – it’s like art – I don’t know how to define it but I know good PD when I come away from it.

I participated in the AP Biology Reading this summer for the first time.  It was a hard slog, and when people would notice the acorn symbol that identified me as a newbie they would always inquire, “how are you liking it?”  It was a sort of odd way to put the arduous and long days we spent, yet I walked away from that week feeling like it was just about the best experience I had had professionally in a long time – I was in the company of highly-motivated professionals who were united by a single purpose of providing consistent, fair grading while performing our task with the utmost of due diligence.  I also brought back terrific content revelations that immediately impacted my teaching.

Fast forward through the three Kenan Fellowship PDs and the feeling is fairly similar.  I truly enjoy being in the company of highly-motivated professionals who are united by a single purpose of developing our skills as teacher leaders and curriculum experts.  We have been through a number of valuable learning experiences together, and even though there have been technical glitches that elicited some grumbling, I feel like I have had my teaching changed as a result of the experiences.

The best PD leaves you feeling empowered, informed, and energized with new possibilities.  I have come away from each of the Kenan PDs with some level of each, which sounds like a successful suite of offerings to me. The Kenan experiences have been especially welcome under the trying times for teaching in which we find ourselves.  It may just sustain me through the professional rough patch that’s I’m going through now.

I used to be a very non-Facebook person.  I thought it was a waste of time and pretty frivolous – lots of pictures of peoples’ food and pets and crazy party stunts.  Not that that doesn’t go on, but I have actually come to haunt my page fairly frequently – using it as a way to check in with friends (real ones, not the head count) who are having milestones or sharing news.  All in all, as a way of keeping low-demand contact I think it’s fun.

That being said, in the classroom I really don’t see how maintaining personal relationships would have an application in my instruction, and I guess that’s the overall view shared by the districts who ban its presence in any educational setting.  There are other, better ways to access news feeds and topical ruminations.

But that’s Facebook.  In the realm of other social medium I can (and am) seeing a clear potential for application.  Honestly, my students are buzzed when the come in and report “I got your text last night” (I’m connected with the majority of them through remind101.  I can be a nag if I want and they seem to appreciate my reaching out, in a wierd sort of way.  I have actually found that platform to be super duper for using to get brief communications out to a large number of people.

Using a Twitter feed (strictly for class – i don’t follow ANY of my students) has also been a very real way to maintain an school presence in students’ lives.  I think that if more districts could see the potential, proper applications of these avenues of communication then there would be less resistance.

However, and it’s a big one – it does demand that the teacher be uber-disciplined about their use and not slip into the “just want to be friends” mind – Unless you can ensure that the professionalism will be maintained across the board, it’s probably better to have an overall caution about social media and then let teachers prove their educational and communicative value.

Most of the pedagogical epiphanies that I have experienced over the summer were listed in the previous blog post.  As we have entered the frenzy of the new school year, I have noticed that I am a bit bolder about putting these new initiatives into place.

I’m now on YouTube!  I mastered the technology of annotating work with a stylus so I can now walk students through problem sets through the online tutorials.  As I have told my students, “you can now take me home with you!” (OK, sometimes accompanied by groans, as in “why would I want to do THAT?”  But just wait until I film a tutorial wearing my Viking helmet!!  They seem intrigued.  These are the baby steps into flipping some class content or at least differentiation for students needing to “re-run” a lesson.  Cool!

I am using remind101 to text reminders to students.  It really is just another way to bridge the gap between in and out of school.  On of the biggest problems we have is the “out of sight (class), out of mind” mentality of our struggling students, and this way I can be in their mind, as long as they sign up.  I’m working on that.

I’m energized.  Same content I’ve taught for 12 years, but renewed for fresh approaches.  That’s a tremendous boost to take into the new school year.

As I grind through the many pieces that are going to go into the 4-H curriculum I keep coming up with moments of, “I can’t wait to share this!” – with my students and with fellow teachers.  The conceptual discovery of the central importance of the microbiome is enough to wax poetic about for a few days.  I am certain that my unit on biodiversity will look very different this year and probably on into the future.

Mechanically I am actually going to flip a few lessons.  Baby steps on this one, probably because I just detest myself on video.  Maybe just a voiceover to start with.  I envision poster creation using the cool poster sites like Easel.ly.  I foresee using Socrative.  I now have a Twitter account for directing science news towards my students (and opening up another means of communicating classroom news besides Moodle, School Fusion, and PowerSchool.) QR codes will have a place in my instruction.

If only every teacher could have the opportunity or had the will to dive into professional development like we have this summer.  Imagine how energized we could be in the face of the state that’s trying to rob us of so much.

After working though a myriad of logistical and communication challenges, I have come to have some appreciation for just how my professional and personal horions have been broadened through the lab visits over the summer.

On a personal note, it is amazing how far the routine lab bench work has come from the “stones and bones” era in which I earned by doctorate.  So many processes have been standardized, put into kits, or automated compared to “back in the day.”  It makes sense, since the flip side of this is that so many of the basic processes remain the same – people still extract DNA from varied samples, purify and quantify it, and then manipulate it in some way.  THe more things change, the more they stay the same….A REALLY cool moment came when I met the Nanodrop – an instrument that can give an accurate reading of the DNA content in ONE DROP of sample, why, back in my time you had to sacrifice a fair portion of your sample just to quantitate it.  Amazing!

An ongoing “Aha” has been my growing awareness of the concept of the microbiome.  THis is really a relevant, personal, and totally cool area of science that I KNOW I haven’t given a fair amount of attention.  As a speaker said yesterday in our group – when people think biodiversity they always

envision some sort of tropical rain forest but there’s a rainforest worth of bacteria in your bellybutton.  Gross but SOOO COOL!

I know that my teaching will change as a result of this summer experience.  I anticipate being an ambassador for the science content but also for the real world of exploration that perhaps some of my students can be inspired to enter.

Not bad for a summer, hmm?

We took advantage of an acquaintance today to make a field trip to the NIEHS Core Sequencing Facility in Research Triangle Park.  We were royally hosted by the head of the group, and sat down with him and some of his lab people to hear them describe how they go about their sequencing tasks and the new technology that seems to blossom each day.  It was absolutely amazing to discover that many of the terms and concepts that he described were things that we have become at least passingly familiar during our externship.  (We also scored some awesome surplus lab stuff to take back to our classrooms!)  The whole field of rapid genome sequencing and the amazing technical advances really boggle the mind!  How cool it is to have experience with current practices to inform our basic instruction in the classroom.  As our host very astutely put it, “you guys (as teachers) are training my replacement!”

I have it lucky!  Many of the experiences and approaches that we are seeing in the lab are directly applicable to my instruction in the classroom.  I can present the whole project in a “how do we do science?” conversation, by modeling the question and the data collection that is being done in the labs as a way to test the experimental hypothesis.  Then, there is the methods piece – because biotechnology and immunity and taxonomy are all part of the Biology Standard Course of Study I can make immediate links to the “hands-on” skills that we are seeing.  That’s all the more operational side of things.  In the more esotetic sense, this is a great experience to cite when discussing biodiversity on a micro scale.  The ecosystem instruction that we do in class is almost always at the macr level – bitds, worms, trees, dandelions, and flies in a forest ecosystem.  What a cool way to represent that diversity – really rich diversity – exists at the microscopic level.  I can even imagine a pretty good “yuck” factor when introducing the location and sampling of the intestinal microbiome. I can’t wait!

A couple of yrears ago my principal defined three types of teachers when it comes to technology – the technology novices (Probably a nice way of saying “virgins”) – those who really shy away from anything having to do with wireless or screens or keyboards or software.  You know, the ones who always get NCWISE screwed up.  A second level is the technology recruits – maybe folks who aren’t incredibly savvy but who are willing to take on new ideas and devices with some courage.  Finally, there are the technology natives – folks who are not only undeterred by new applications and experiences but who mine those and see possibilities everywhere (think Jonathan!).

I figure our Kenan colleagues are a mixture of recruits and experts – pretty rich resources for our respective schools.  However, there are always going to be some challenges, and here’s what I see.

Personally, what holds me back is simply time to dig in and become proficient.  I don’t have time or the classes that will permit me to learn an application “on the fly” – I need to have some deep experience with a particular application before I try to use it in class.  Sure, there’s always that kid who knows WAY more than I do and can usually figure out a way (that’s a techn-native).  But when I am crafting the learning experiences for my class I really don’t want to be fumbling around.  I write lots of little grants to fund my personal technology needs – I LOVE DonorsChoose!  Lacking systemic financial support that’s what has to be done.  In school there is just always that cadre of teachers who think “I don’t need this” and so don’t join the herd to integrate technology in their instruction.  Seriously, how much technology do you need in Advanced Weightlifting?  (Ah, but we know of some, don’t we??)

Time, money, buy-in.  The recipe for success.

Clearly the rafting trip was the bomb!  We managed to keep most of the COLD water out of the boat and have a great time forming a new team.  The trip was varied and fascinating – the mist on the river, the geology that we could see from river’s level, and the biodiversity stop were all cool.

Now, the other important takeaway from NCCAT was the beginning of a sense of community – I met a group of truly fascinating teachers from across the state and I really look forward to seeing many of them again soon and during our fellowship.  We all suffered through some technology trials but overall I found that almost every encounter resulted in a new insight, shared frustration, or fresh idea.  All in all, it was a great initial experience.