The biggest Ah-ha moment I experienced in my Kenan Fellowship was related to diversity in engineering fields. As a teacher, I am well aware of eliminating the achievement gap, gender gap, and other diversity-related movements. My biggest realization this summer was how large the number of foreign students is in the program where I spent my summer. This speaks to the world-renowned quality of our higher education programs. Unfortunately, many of the brightest students will leave the country with their knowledge. As the challenges in the world become more and more complex, we need smart engineers and scientists to solve an expanding list of problems.

As a STEM teacher, I have the power to spark the interest of new generations of students that may grow a love for STEM topics and eventually become highly educated experts that will lead not just the USA, but the world in technological innovations. This is a great responsibility.

The work I am involved in with Dr. Jeffrey at the FREEDM Systems Center aims to spark the interest of students in STEM fields through a kit of hands-on engineering lessons that will be distributed to every county in the state. I was also involved in the educational outreach at the center that aims to educate middle school students, high school students, teachers, and undergraduate students about electrical engineering.

Here is a video that explains the summer experience for students.
Summer FREEDM

Throughout my Kenan Fellowship, my main task has been finalizing a kit of engineering lesson plans and materials that will be distributed to each county in North Carolina. This has required extensive thought into how this kit of lessons will function and be clear to anyone that might decide to teach one (not just teachers). When designing lesson plans for non-teachers, even more thought is involved. Teachers are required to figure out how to “hook” students into every lesson and are  good at adapting the lesson as it unfolds. The effort to make this kit of lessons work well has been a big challenge. Fortunately, there was a lot of good input and development put into the lessons before I was added to the effort. One of the main changes I have made to the five lesson plans is the way it is presented. I have made changes that aim to make the kit less intimidating to begin preparing for a lesson. I hope that this will make the kit more widely used.

For my own KFP lesson plan, I am developing a supplemental activity for the kit. It is a basic introduction to electrical circuits for middle school students. Students will use only their pencil and paper to light up a circuit with LED light bulbs! It is as simple as drawing dark lines on the paper to act as the wires. They will experiment with creating their own series and parallel circuits.

One of the reasons I was so excited to get a Kenan Fellowship at NC State’s FREEDM Systems Center is because it matches so well with what I teach in my classes. I will be teaching two different classes this year.

The first class, Exploring Career Decisions, focuses on students self-assessing themselves and then researching careers that would be a good match. Many times, those careers are in STEM fields. Throughout my externship, I am getting the opportunity to see what many people with STEM careers do “in real life.” This will be invaluable for how I teach my Exploring Career Decisions class. I am also developing a vast network of people and programs that will be great for potential guest speakers and field trips.

The other class I will be teaching is titled Technology Design and Innovation. This class’s main focus is on the design process and solving problems creatively. Even better, students spend a month of the course researching and designing their own “green” homes! What I am observing and learning about at the FREEDM Systems Center is a perfect match for this class!

The experiences I am having at my externship will have a very large positive impact on the way that I teach my classes this coming year.

When it comes to technology, I am pretty fortunate. My classroom is a computer lab! I am lucky enough to be able to easily implement any online resources into my classes every day. I also have access to iPads and other resources from our Media Center. I have often used polleverywhere.com to quickly assess my students, but I am excited to add so much more to my classes after attending NCCAT!

I plan to use kahoot.it as a drill or exit ticket to quickly review what students should know. I also want to incorporate Augmented Reality into my resources as well as their projects.

As far as technology challenges, I would say my biggest one is student’s technology access at home. Many don’t have internet or a computer to access the materials that we use daily in class. Many of our students come from low-income households.

The week-long conference at NCCAT was one of the best professional experiences I have ever attended. Each session was extremely relevant. The things I have learned will transform my classroom environment through the inclusion of many new educational technologies. The two biggest additions to my teaching will be adding augmented reality (Aurasma) and using Kahoot.it for daily drill and/or exit tickets.

Surely, one of the most memorable experiences of the week was my trip down the Nantahala River rapids. While most of the others in my group were getting drenched in frigid water, I made the comment, “I’m pretty dry over here!” Half way through the sentence, I realized my mistake, but the momentum pushed the entire sentence out. Within about three minutes, I was tossed out of the raft by my guide and was the wettest person in/out of the raft. This resulted in being recognized the following morning with the “HMS Bounty” Award.

As a CTE teacher, everything that I experience with the KFP is extremely relevant. It will help me back up the things that I teach with first-hand experiences and ensure that the things I teach are relevant to my students and their possible future in a STEM field. I am also building my network of educators and STEM professionals that will be invaluable throughout my career.

This summer I will be working at NC State’s Future Renewable Electric Energy Delivery and Management (FREEDM) Systems Center for my Kenan Fellowship! Their efforts are focused on revolutionizing the power grid and incorporating green energy technologies.

Last week, I visited my mentor, Dr. Penny Jeffrey, to speak about our project ideas for this summer. I also got to see the office and labs that I will be spending some of my time in. I’m excited to get started!