I’m a bit behind here – been a tough new year.  Got severely sick in January, recovered from that and broke my ankle in February, had surgery in May.  Been difficult to keep up with anything.

I was disappointed that my cooperating mentor didn’t get a chance to come speak to my students this semester.  I broke my ankle two days before he was supposed to visit and school got canceled on the scheduled day anyways.  He still actually volunteered to come (even though I wouldn’t be there), but that wasn’t ok with my principal.

My missing a month has hurt my developed curriculum a bit – since it’s mostly built as an extensional project, I have lost too much time to talk about it with my students.  I did start it earlier this semester and that proved to be a good decision.  I will have to reserve further judgement until the actual projects come in (second week of May).

I really enjoyed developing the curriculum.  The biggest challenge as I see it is simply that the vast majority of the concepts related to my Kenan externship are perhaps a bit too advanced for my students.  If I was still teaching AP Chem or IB Chem II like I did at my last school, I think that I might do a bit more with it.

I am excited that Dr. Muddiman, my mentor, has hired me back to work in his lab at NC State this summer.  I don’t know exactly what I’ll be doing, but will start the summer off by traveling to St. Louis for the American Mass Spectrometry Association conference.