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!! 🙂