My first post was the Friday before NCCAT.  I had not met any of the Kenan teachers and had only talked to the Students Discover group through Google chat.  I remember being excited and nervous for the summer to start.  And now, I still can’t believe that this part of Kenan Fellowship is over!!  One of my best friends who I teach with just accepted her fellowship with Students Discover Ants project and I’m so jealous!  This experience taught me to be a more reflective teacher, to think outside the box, and allow my students to participate in more real science experiences–citizen science.  My externship, my mentor, and my fellow shark teeth fellows all made this such an amazing experience.  Working at the Museum of Natural Sciences was exciting and a fun place to work, surrounded by people who loved what they do and all to happy to share their findings and interests.  My mentor was so down-to-earth and a really cool guy to work with.  He made learning fun and taught me so many valuable skills that I brought back to the classroom.   My fellow, fellows made the day-to-day work fun and interesting.  I was able to learn how they implemented certain topics into their curriculum and different labs for different content.  I was new to teaching 8th grade science and they were amazing at giving me ideas!  I can’t say enough amazing things about this experience and I recommend the Kenan Fellowship program to all the teachers I know!  Thank you 🙂

Anyone who has talked to me for more than 10 minutes about Kenan could tell you that I was very hesitant to accept my fellowship.  I was so worried about writing curriculum (something I hadn’t done before), and how much work I would have to do on top of teaching.  I could not be happier with deciding to jump in with both feet!  This experience has been one of the best in my life, professionally and personally.  I was lucky enough to have an amazing mentor and colleagues to work with that made writing lessons fun!  I know our Shark Teeth group is very happy and proud of our lessons and they were a blast to implement in the classroom.

I was a little worried to see how our lessons would scale to outside of North Carolina.  Any teacher in North Carolina could easily complete our lessons by ordering the sediment and shipping their data and teeth back to Bucky at the museum.  What we as a group struggled with was what to do with teachers OUTSIDE of North Carolina.  We met as a team during a Scale Research day at the Friday Institute and we were able to brainstorm how we could scale our lessons to reach more teachers.  The teachers could have students measure and analyze pictures of teeth and send the measurement data back to the museum.  I would love to see my lessons be used all over the country and with some more modifications and added relevance to other continents, I believe it could be used all over the world!

Go big or go home! 🙂

I had never owned a tablet before I was given the Lenovo  Tablet.  I was so excited to see that it used Windows 8 and that it also had a very sturdy keyboard.  I was a little worried that it wouldn’t hold up to my constant use, but it has more than surpassed my expectations!  I have been able to record videos and photos on it in addition to using it as my primary laptop (my husband doesn’t share his too often).  I love that this tablet is compact because I am able to fit it easily into my school bag and use it every day at work.  For something so small, I am able to do everything I need to do on it!

Thank you Lenovo!! 🙂

This picture was taken back in September when I implemented my lessons with my Animal Science class.  I will complete my lessons a second time in a few weeks with all of my 8th graders!!  I’m so excited!!

At the beginning of this experience I thought that this partnership would be two people with different expertise moving towards the same goal.  By the end of the summer, the partnership was so much more than that!  My mentor became my friend and taught me so much more than what I needed to know about my project.  He is someone who I will stay in touch with long after the fellowship has concluded.  I also feel that way about the other fellows on my project.  I made two amazing friendships out of this experience and I was able to utilize two amazing brains to help create our module.

This has been an amazing experience!  I cannot say enough good things, probably the best experience of my life.  It has been amazing to interact with so many teachers who are passionate about what they do.  It is so easy to get pulled down by the many negative teachers I interact with on a day-to-day basis, so these PD’s have been a great way to lift me up and spark my creative juices.

Some districts ban the use of social media in and out of classrooms, and others encourage its use.   How do you explain such polar viewpoints?

I believe that some districts do not fully understand how social media can benefit the classroom.  More specifically, they don’t know how social media can be used as a tool to increase student awareness and get them invested in their learning.  Others would rather not take the risk even though they realize there is some reward.  Even though there is some reward, the district would rather not take the chance of allowing electronic devices in the classroom and chance students not being on task.  I know many teachers who have twitter accounts specifically for their students and it helps the students connect real-world events in their day-to-day life, back to what they are doing in the classroom.  Yes, the students could write inappropriate tweets, but the reward is so much greater than that possible risk.

I feel that technology has always been the future and students are using social media whether we like it or not.  We (as educators) need to realize this and create instruction that utilizes skills that the students enjoy using!  Student enjoyment = better learning outcomes.

One of the main reasons why I wanted to do Paleontology Project was because I didn’t know a lot about the topic.  Throughout my externship, I was able to learn more about the geological time scale and what existed during each period.  Also, I learned more about Pangaea and the formation of the United States.  Learning these two important pieces of information will help me a lot when I teach the evolution unit on lifeforms and landforms.  Finally, I learned a lot about shark teeth, how to identify and measure them.  This will help when I implement these strategies into my curriculum module.

The key components of my Paleontology Module that incorporates citizen science are the measurements the students are taking for the shark teeth they find.  Their measurements will be recorded into a data table and a graph and sent back to Dr. Gates at the Natural Research Center.  The success of each component depends on the students taking the correct measurements and entering them into the table correctly and looking for all the available shark teeth in their sample.  The students will complete a lot of practice before they are ready to take proper measurements and so they feel comfortable finding shark teeth.

I feel like I can’t say this enough, my experience was amazing!  My biggest aha moment was when I finally understood what I was doing on my externship and I was able to see how I was going to incorporate it into my curriculum.  I was very nervous about what I was going to be doing for the summer (now I know that the mentors didn’t know either!)  But after I was able to see that it was something that I could easily implement into my classroom, I felt so much better and I was able to see clearly and plan out 4 lessons.  The aha came when Dr. Gates explained what he wanted from us and it all made sense.  I remember saying “oooooohhhh I get it” out loud! I am so excited to implement my lessons in my classroom and be able to get real data that I can share with my mentor.