Before writing this last assigned blog I was feeling nostalgic of the year gone by. What a wonderful year! While I blogged, I had the opportunity to reflect on what I was doing, how I was doing things, and how I was working with my students. This blogged helped me in  that: REFLECT.  I had to stop everything else to complete the blogging assignments, and that helped each month, on going back on what I have done, and how to continue improving. Just few times I wrote a blog which wasn’t part of an assignment and that felt great, too. I wanted to share accomplishments or thoughts that came up through my Kenan Fellow experience. And I want to continue blogging, sharing more future accomplishments or reflections with other fellows. I am not sure how often I will do that but hopefully I will lead myself to stop, sit, and write for a moment.

I have always wondered how many of the Kenan Fellows read my blogs, or does anyone reads them at all, besides Craig? Honestly, I haven’t had the time to sit and read many of the other fellows blogs, and wish I had had the time. I had only read a few through the year. It would be nice to start a dialog and conversations through the blogs. When I read blogs from others, I felt assured of what I was doing as a Kenan Fellow, which was nice to feel because sometimes there was uncertainty; by reading them I felt I was where everyone was at that moment.

It would have even be great for my students to read the blogs I was writing….

This year has gone by so fast. Maybe it felt this way because of all the interesting and exciting things I was doing and experiencing through this fellowship. And the nice part of it is that the fellowship continues, it will never stop now.

Looking back, my first blog was titled “Empowerment”; this is what this year has been for me and for my students. I now feel I can ask my students to complete tasks, assignments, and work I never thought they could do, and also be interested in doing them. I see my students also feel empowered; they feel they can do anything they set for, no matter the challenge. They have learned so much, they are becoming critical thinkers and can analyze situations, while solving problems. They have grown so much academically, and personally! They have learned to work in teams, collaborate, and support each other through our projects.

Last summer internship not only taught me about geology, paleontology, evolution, and taphonomy, but helped me build strong relationships with my mentor, with the other postdocs at the Nature Research Center;  I feel I can always go back there and feel like “at home”. I have learned a lot from my mentor, Bucky Gates, about doing science in the classroom, becoming a better science teacher, bringing that “scientist” part of me alive again, while empowering my students to be scientists themselves. Once I told Bucky that I was loving this year because I had become a scientist again, doing some research again, as I used to do so many years ago, after I graduated as a biologist and before becoming a teacher. The nice thing is that I am incorporating both things now in my life and in my classroom.

I feel re-energized with all these experiences and have plans to do more new projects in the classroom, improving also the ones I already do. With my 6th grade teaching team, I have introduced the Dandelion project with Dr. Julia Stevens, and we have already started it! Students seem excited, too.

This year I also had the opportunity to present a citizen science project at the Inaugural Citizen Science Conference in San Jose, CA; what a wonderful experience!  Empowerment…Hopefully, I will be presenting at more conferences in the near future.

Every day I keep learning more and that is what makes life enjoyable. I learn as I teach, and want to transmit that joy to my students.

Wow! This has been an incredible journey this year! And the lessons we designed are ready for others to start implementing them in the classroom.

It has been an interesting year of deciding how best to do citizen science in the classroom, how to get students engaged and motivated to do science, and even become scientists. I have enjoyed every bit if it, thinking on how my students would respond to each of the lessons I designed for the Shark Teeth Forensics Case Study. I have also enjoyed learning about paleontology, evolution, and shark teeth, together with Kimberly and Kerrie, from our great mentor Bucky.The entire process we have been through has involved meaningful and fun experiences; experiences we want to share with other teachers, and of course, with the new KF Students Discover cohort.

We talked about students being scientists, but we teachers, have also been scientists ourselves this year. We have learned and discussed issues with other scientists, we have been at the site of study (Aurora) before developing our lessons, we have collected data, and we have analyzed that data with our students. We are getting ready to present and publish all the information gathered. What an amazing and enriching experience! We are the ones beginning to make the change on  how science is taught in the classroom, and will be sharing this with teachers around the county, around the state, and nation; even around the entire world.

I would like to see my Case Study lessons used locally in middle schools and even in high schools; to be implemented in my county (Wake), statewide, and even nationwide if possible. The case study I designed is composed of various lessons that can be all taught together in the order of the study, but can also be used in the form of isolated lessons, or can be shortened if necessary. The lessons can be implemented in science classes in middle school, even in high school science, but can also be implemented in math classes. They are appropriate lessons for studying statistics in Common Core math lessons. I would like to see many teachers implementing my lessons, modifying them based on their needs, and even see teachers become motivated to create their own new citizen science lessons for their classroom.

The way “Science” is done nowadays is changing due to our global communities. More citizen science is being done now all over the world. And we, as teachers, need to also change on “how we teach science in the classroom” to “how we do science in the classroom”.

Nowadays, technology is very important in the classroom, and is an important tool for a teacher. The Lenovo tablet has been a very important tool in my Kenan Fellows experience overall. I have used it in the classroom, out of the classroom, and taken it everywhere I go. I like it because it is small and handy; I can take it anywhere, and use it anywhere.

At school I have use it all the time and specially when implementing the Shark Teeth Case Study I designed for my 6th graders. I wrote and saved the lessons in this tablet, used the tablet to project learning targets, diagrams, pictures on the classroom screen.

Additionally, I was able to attach the Dino-Lite Camera to this tablet so students could take measurements of very small shark teeth, take pictures of them and project it on the screen so the whole class could see the small shark teeth measurements. Very cool!

I continuously use my tablet for emails, communication, creating data tables, graphs for analysis of data, create infographics, and power point presentations. To inform about the Shark Teeth Case Study I have already created a power point presentation using this tablet. The Fossil Club I coordinate has also been using this tablet, together with the Dino-lite Camera.

Additionally, I have been taking my tablet to Conferences and presentations. Recently, our school was invited to present our “Tracking Turtles” project at the Legislature Building, and presented a power point of it using this tablet. I also presented this project in the San Jose Citizen Science  Conference through a power point I had made with this tablet. the nice thing was that I was able to make videos of my students and in-bedded the videos in the power point; I couldn’t take students to the conference so I videotaped them for the conference. I also made videos of students reflecting about “being scientists” (the files too big to upload here).

The Lenovo tablet has been a great “companion”.

Last year I decided to apply to the Kenan Fellows Program because of the possibility of a partnership with the Nature Research Center, where I would have  a scientist as a mentor. How exciting! That’s the reason I applied, that’s what I was looking for with this fellowship, and maybe that is the reason why many other Kenan Fellows applied. It is so important for schools to start creating partnerships, and finding mentor-ships with other professionals out there, willing to contribute to education in NC.

I have learned a lot from my mentor ( Bucky Gates), I have grown as a professional, and as a teacher, and that is why I can say I am so grateful for this fellowship. This is what I was looking for, to keep on moving on my teaching career. This year, as I team-teach with three other teachers, we have found out that the quality of our lessons have gone beyond what we expected. It has been an amazing experience.

And for our students, it has been an amazing experience, as well. They felt so lucky to be able to interact with a real scientist in the classroom, to feel like scientists at work, and to realize how much fun it is to learn this way. It has real meaning for them, and start feeling empowered as students, too.

Now that the partnership is a reality….. I love it, and I know is not only going to be a partnership for one year; it’s going to be for the rest of my teaching career… and I love that.

The three KFP Professional Development Institutes have enriched me as a teachers, as a professional, and as a person. “They have helped me lift my wings to start flying”.

I have learned new strategies to apply in the classroom, have used new tools in the classroom, feel comfortable creating new lessons, and feel more passionate about what I do, and how I do it. As I have said before, I feel empowered to do anything.

A good example of this has been related to the need I felt about creating a new partnership with the Aurora-Potash Corp Phosphate Mine. Partnerships and collaborations are very helpful when doing Citizen Science projects. Thinking about our Shark Teeth lessons, I thought it would be great if together with my students we could create a “virtual tour” video of the mine. That is the place where the shark teeth we study come from, and schools cannot visit the mine. Therefore, I found out who I should contact at the mine and sent an email with a a brief collaborative proposal for the creation of that virtual tour video. The email was taken in consideration, but the answer was that no one could tour the mine. Then, I took my students to the Aurora Fossil Museum, and saw the great importance, in motivation and excitement, for these students to have been there; to have had that experience, getting them excited about the lessons to begin. I, again thought, that “virtual tour” video is very important, and feeling empowered, decided to continue insisting on this. I have contacted Potash Corp again, and have met with the Public Affairs manager, meeting that turned out to be very successful. They are now considering the possibility of creating this video with my students; they have seen the importance of it, and recognized the impact this video would make on the community, and the whole state, realizing how important they can be in NC education. A collaborative process has begun with Postash Corp!

Another aspect that has brought a lot to me is having met, and shared with all the Kenan Fellows, teachers who really care about what they do and want to work hard on making a difference. It’s been a wonderful experience to be with all of them in the PDs days, and collaborate in a closer relationship with the Students Discover teachers. I keep learning from them every day, as well, and have felt very fortunate to be with all of you.

I never imagined how far our 6th graders could go in their work. I have been implementing  the Case Study I designed: JAWS- Forensic Case Study, and I am amazed of my students’ work and results. They have been real scientists in the classroom and have taken the role seriously, enjoying it as well.

They have found shark teeth, have identified them, have come up with questions to answer with the data collected, have taken different teeth measurements and analyzed them using measures of center and variability, finding that the shark teeth sizes do not vary much, based on the range of sizes measured. They are coming up with conclusions now, mentioning what types of sharks were at the Aurora region 25-5 million years ago, when it was covered with ocean water.

As scientists do, they are ready to publish now, creating a”Piktochart” to present their results, and I am  perplexed to see groups working ” so naturally”, like regular scientists together to finish this journey.

This has been amazing!!!

I can’t find words to express how grateful I am for this Kenan Fellowship experience. Through Dr. Bucky  Gates and his Paleo lab I have learned so much, I feel empowered, and ready to put all that knowledge into practice.

We have started our “JAWS- Forensics” Case study where our students are becoming scientists and Taphonomists. We have been studying prehistoric Earth, and now beginning to “dig for fossils”. This past Thursday we took our 6th graders to the Aurora Fossil Museum, place where we had the opportunity to meet and listen to Ray McKeithan, Manager of Public and Government Affairs at Potash Corp, the Aurora Phosphate Mine, who talked to our students and answered their questions. It’s great to see the beginning of a collaborative relationship with the Phosphate mine.

After that session, all students went to the museum exhibits, looking at fossils, and especially looking at shark teeth. As scientists do, they were gathering information about the different shark teeth on display, how they are arranged in the upper and lower jaws, and how they vary by species.

And the best part came later. All students had the chance to go find shark teeth! at the pile of discarded material from the phosphate mine, at the Museum. They enjoyed that so much, as they became familiar with finding shark teeth (skill necessary fort he upcoming lessons). Some collected around 20, some even 30 or 40 different shark teeth. But the happiest student was the one that found the biggest half tooth in the pile; a Megalodon tooth.

It was funny because we continued our trip, going to Manteo, then Plymouth, and the next day to little Washington. Everywhere we stopped there was a road, a side walk or pathway made with the discarded material from the mine, and every chance the students had, we could see them on the ground looking for shark teeth…..

What a wonderful trip with the kids! And a great experience for them.

Social media has taken over everyone’s life , and seems to be the way to communicate with others nowadays. People post pictures, news, their latest activities, text information, or just about anything they think at that moment.

At school, social media can be used, if used appropriately at all times, which is difficult to do when talking about “students using social media”. At our school, we were just talking about that with our 6th graders today. They post things without even thinking about what the consequences of putting something out in public. It could be something hurtful to others, or information that could be use inappropriately by others. You can tell students to think about consequences, but will they be able to do that? Will or can 6th grader think of the all possible consequences of posting something out there?

Schools can encourage the use a certain social media programs with an educational purpose and with high control of it. Students are motivated to work when social media is involved in an assignment, and it’s a great tool to communicate among students and teachers, but all programs should be used with responsibility.

Often, when social media is used inappropriately outside school, is becomes a problem also inside the school, and that ‘s when schools start banning this usage, in and out of the classroom. Like anything, social media usage has to be done appropriately and with responsibility, and that is the difficult part for students, and sometimes even for adults.