Tag Archives: #teacherlife

One-Way Flight

As I type this, I sit at my desk in the North Carolina Science Festival/Morehead Production Team office above Sugarland and Carolina Coffee Shop on Franklin Street. My water bottle drips a few beads of sweat while I pull my denim shirt tighter around me to ward off impending goosebumps. I think I might miss being perpetually chilly…

Today is my last day in the office with the team. I’m heading to Ohio for a few days with family, and when I return it’ll be time for me to start whipping my elementary school classroom into shape before the workdays start (does anyone else find it completely absurd that on workdays we never have actual chunks of time to get our classrooms ready? Or is that just me?). Truly, this summer has flown by.

It feels not so long ago that we were all at NCCAT meeting one another for the first time, making connections with our spirit dogs, and adventuring down the Nantahala (HOW GREAT WAS THAT?!).

As I sit here, I find the time to type this because my lessons are completed. My supplemental materials are finished. All that’s left for me to do is wait — I want to review the curriculum with the other third grade teachers at my school, and my mentors need to review the curriculum as well. I’ve started taking the teacher lesson plans I’ve written and translating them into layman’s terms for the Festival’s public library program so we can put together some one-page activity guides.

I’ve also been sketching planes and rockets, but that’s been happening since all this started in the middle of June.

This has been an experience that was unexpected yet wonderful. I’ve learned a lot, and not only in regards to flight. I’ve learned about professionalism, how to work with a wide array of people, and increasing community engagement by networking. I knew this internship would look different than that of my peers, and it was hard for me hearing about all the amazing, hands-on activities so many other people were doing throughout the summer while I sat on a computer most of the day. I had to continue to tell myself to be patient, and that my hands-on moments would come, they’d just come later.

Now that our summer chapter is coming to an end, I’m feeling very hopeful, excited, and happy. I feel very good about my program activities, and I can’t wait to see them translated into activity guides for librarians, informal educators, and other teachers to use. I think the lessons are solid and the community outreach piece that we’re still working on will be just as strong. I’m excited to continue my connections with people at places like the Carolinas Aviation Museum, North Carolina Library Services, and the Wright Brothers Memorial. I’m beyond excited to start communication with companies like Raytheon and Lockheed Martin (insert nerd FREAK OUT here).

Ultimately, I just cannot wait to meet the sweet babies that get to be my passengers on this curriculum pilot with me!

[Puns!]

This whole summer has given me a fresh perspective on what it means to really engage my students. I like to think I’m fairly aware of what hooks my kiddos, and I’m constantly trying to do all that I can to make their learning experiences enjoyable ones. I’ve seen firsthand the effectiveness of getting kids to create and do, not just “sit and get” their information, and between my previous classroom experiences and this summer’s KFP experience, I’m more cognizant of how imperative it is to grab student attention with science.

Even though today is my last day in the office with NCSF and Morehead staff, they know they’ll have to do more than take away my keys to rid me of this office. 🙂

Here’s to a beautiful summer filled with experiential learning, and an even more beautiful start to a new school year!

Control Panel

There have been a few a-ha moments for me this summer. My eyes have been opened to things that have been lighting up on my control panel for a while that have needed tending to, and now I know that I must do something about those flashing little lights.

  1. Professional Development: The level of PD that I’ve experienced with this program has been out of this world. I’ve been engaged, I’ve been challenged, and I’ve been left with a mind that’s just reeling with questions and ideas. I’ve never left a PD at my school feeling this way, so this is quite refreshing. My time with Morehead Planetarium and the NCSF has also opened my eyes to what it means to be a true professional. It’s been an honor to be called the “in-house teaching expert” while I’ve been there, and it feels so good to be seen as competent, trustworthy, and knowledgeable about my craft. I keep a personal blog and word exploded this post about PD — feel free to check that out if you’re so inclined.
    Action steps: Take my PD experiences with Kenan Fellows and do my best to translate them into my school environment. Continue to stay positive and implement all I can while on the school’s leadership team this year.
  2. Citizen Science: THIS is how to engage kids, y’all. This right here. I had never heard of citizen science before this summer, and I am HOOKED (if you think I’m joking, as any of my non-teaching friends what I’ve been talking about for the last few weeks). The ways we’ve had the chance to engage in citizen science projects with Dr. Holly from NCCAT or with Prairie Ridge Ecostation, all I can think about is my kids and how much they’d love what I’m doing. I’ve always believed science, and education in general, should be very hands-on and experiential, and this concept of citizen science has totally renewed my teaching spirit in this thinking! I literally cannot wait to take this idea back to my school and my kiddos in a few weeks — those eight-year-olds are going to love it!
    Action steps: Integrate citizen science into my every day classroom curriculum. Already thinking of ways I can get involved through our science units this year!

There’s been another overarching a-ha moment for me as well. I really love what I do. I’ve known this and have felt completely confident in my decision to be a teacher (or did teaching choose me? Of course there’s a blog post about that, too). This overarching a-ha comes in the form of reinforcing my passion for this profession. I take this job so seriously, and I am absolutely humbled to call myself a teacher to these precious children in Chapel Hill-Carrboro. I am also humbled at the fact that I have the opportunity to work with all of you Kenan Fellows. I can’t help but think “A-ha! This is exactly where I need to be!” every time we get together. Thank you for that, fellow friends!

Looking forward to experiencing many more a-ha moments as this journey continues.

The Air is Thinner Up Here

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So this is what it feels like up here, huh? On top of the world, on top of my education game, on top of a mountain.

I just spent a week in Cullowhee, NC at NCCAT with a group of some of the most fabulous educators I’ve had the privilege of meeting.

It’s kind of hard to put into words how perfect this past week was for me. I always feel like SUCH a nerd when I’m at school and in meetings with other teachers. I often feel over-zealous and almost misunderstood when I find so much joy and excitement in creating a really incredible, integrated project and discuss the infinite pleasures I find in my teaching profession.

How refreshing to be in the same room with almost 50 other people who feel the way I feel about all this — about reaching kids, about pushing students to achieve their fullest potential, about getting kids completely stoked about learning.

The number of take-aways from this past week are innumerable. I not only learned how to push my kids, but I pushed myself this week, too. The day we spent on the Nantahala River was definitely something out of my comfort zone — I’m not much of a swimmer, and with zero rafting experience and a terrifying “in case you fall out of the raft” video, I was feeling a tad apprehensive. If I could have flashed forward a couple hours from the start of the rafting experience, I would have NEVER imagined I’d be jumping in the river with a new best friend.

It was thrilling, it was cold, it was everything I needed.

I think one of my favorite things about this Kenan experience thus far is how it pushes me. I enjoy getting out of my comfort zone and learning and growing as a person and teacher, and this is the exact thing I needed right now.

Aside from channeling my inner-Bear Grylls on the river, I learned about a ton of new technology tools I can use in my classroom for myself AND my kiddos. It was so interesting hearing about a flipped classroom — I’ve heard of flipping before, but I never knew much about it and I certainly had no idea how I could (IF I could) ever do that in my third grade classroom. I love that there are options involved — I don’t have to flip EVERY little thing, but rather I can choose what to flip. Also, how brilliant is it to video a lesson to show your kids for when you’re absent?! Mind: blown.

It was also generally amazing to have the opportunity to connect with other Kenan Fellows, both past and present. How wonderful hearing about old projects, their impact, and the projects everyone is currently working on with their mentors! It was also neat connecting with people from my PLN on Twitter. I always knew that Twitter was an amazing platform for education, and there I sat with others I followed for so long. So grateful for you folks!

Even with all the negativity encompassing North Carolina education, I have so much hope. There is so much good happening with educators and in schools in this state, and I am beyond blessed and honored to call myself a Kenan Fellow with all you passionate, driven, stellar human beings.

Preparing for Take Off

Let me begin this post by letting the world know that I plan on making every title of my blog posts a flight pun.

I’m working with the North Carolina Science Festival this summer and I’m studying the physics of flight. To be completely honest, I started this week knowing very little about flying — I have limited experience with planes (I didn’t experience an airplane ride for the first time until I was 17-years-old) and I’m terrible at physics.

Sounds like “The First in Flight Challenge” is right up my alley, right?

I took a class at UNC called Physics 100: How Things Work. It was a requirement for my elementary education major, which, at the time, I found to be completely ridiculous. I’ve never studied so hard in my life and I’ve simultaneously never been more proud of a B-. I never thought I would need to have a physics knowledge to teach elementary schoolers, and as soon as I took that class final, I pulled an Elsa and just let it go.

Flash-forward and I’ve knocked out my first two years teaching on my own. Through those two years, I realized how important physics really is and how much I really do love learning how things work.

I constantly encourage my kids to ask questions and to figure out the why and how of things. Now, here I am, practicing what I preach.

I took on this fellowship with great excitement. I knew nothing about flight (see how that is a past participle?!) and was eager to learn something new.

That’s what this is all about for me — learning something new.

My ultimate goal that I’d like to achieve from this fellowship is to have a new experience and learn throughout the process. I want to better myself as both a teacher and a learner so that I can exemplify lifelong learning to my students.

This week has been such a blast. I’m working on lesson plans, reaching out to libraries, and building paper airplanes and testing the designs. Working this week has been an absolute dream and I couldn’t be more thrilled to see how all this works together in the end!