A-HA!

A-HA!

The biggest A-HA moment I’ve had during my externship experience (and the PD Institutes have contributed to it some) is that just because I’m a math teacher doesn’t mean I can’t also teach science.  I know this seems obvious, and I’ve always in some way known this, but it hasn’t really ever “clicked” for me like it has this summer.  There was actually a definitive moment when this light bulb went off.  I was sitting in my principal’s office about a week ago, sharing with him what I’ve been up to all summer with Kenan Fellows and what that’s going to mean for my classes this year.  During the conversation, I asked him, a bit hesitantly, “Okay, so I know I have a lot of standards of my own to cover, but if I cover science standards in a certain lesson, can I assess students on those and count it toward their grade?”  As the words fell out of my mouth, the light bulb started to brighten.  My principal responded with, “You’re asking for permission to do more than what’s expected of you and to check to see if it’s working for kids?  Get outside of the testing box!!”  I pride myself on not teaching to a test and teaching kids in a way that they are ready for any application of the math, be it a test question or a grocery store encounter.  In that conversation, however, I realized that the whole testing and standards and scores mentality does affect the way I think about teaching.  I was worried about teaching (and assessing) more than what they’d see on my EOC test.

In my externship, I am doing a LOT of math.  I’m doing math well beyond the level that my students would be able to do at this point in their math careers.  However, when I have to decide what data sets to go find, I have to read and research.  I find articles about the connection between wind shears and hurricanes, and realize this probably isn’t as interesting as sea surface temperatures and hurricanes.  I have to learn the science of how all that stuff interacts, and then pick the relevant data sets to analyze and quantify these relationships.  In the work I’ve been doing here at SAMSI, the science is necessary for me to do good math.  Without understanding the science, the math would be arbitrary and meaningless.  The intertwined-ness (made up word, sorry!) of it all has really made me realize that this is how I should be teaching.  I can be a science teacher too.  Getting kids excited about science in my math class, or getting kids excited about math through science–either way, what great implications for the likelihood that they will pursue education and a career in the field!

Coming Soon

Part of this blog post is going to be a 3-5 minute video.  Most of the work I do involves getting data off the internet, formatting it, running it through programs, and then interpreting the results.  I’m sure you don’t want to see a 3-5 minute video of me sitting at a desk working on a computer, so I’m going to work on a screen-cast video so you can see up-close and personal what I’ve been doing!