Creating the curriculum was the most challenging task that I faced during the Kenan Fellows program, but at the same time, it was one of the most exciting!
There were many things about the process that I enjoyed and some things that were more frustrating. I am so thankful to have worked through the process with my “mitey” fine team. I know that all Kenan Fellows did not get that privilege. Like in all cases, more brains are better than one! We were also a diverse group. Two of us, myself and Willis, are 7th grade teachers, and Maribeth is an 8th grade teacher. We all work at different schools as well. We had to do two separate lessons, 7th grade and 8th grade, but it was still SO helpful to have worked as a team. We also had the help of our mentor, Dr. Fergus.
One of the challenges me and Willis faced was fitting the Demodex mites experiment into the 7th grade curriculum. It fit well into the 8th grade curriculum, but 7th grade was a stretch. It worked nicely while teaching scientific inquiry, which is the direction that we went in; however, science inquiry isn’t tested in 7th grade, which can cause issues with pacing.
The other challenge that we have faced with the mite curriculum is the scaling. In our curriculum, a scientist is needed to analyze the student swabs to look for mite DNA. We had a scientist in partnership with the NC Museum of Natural Sciences. so it worked perfectly for us; however, if other teachers around the world would like to teach our curriculum, this poses a challenge. There is a scaling team working on this issue, so I cannot wait to see where it goes.
The most exciting thing of all was implementing the curriculum!! I truly built up the mite lab that we were going to do in class. I implemented my curriculum at the beginning of the year, so I barely knew my students. This was a wonderful introduction to my science classroom, and my students had a ball. We have the results of their question, “Do Middle School Students Have Mites?”, but we haven’t told them yet. They ask me ALL of the time!
I hope that this isn’t the last time that I do this citizen science project in my classroom. There is a chance that I’ll be moved up to teach 8th grade next year, so I’d love to take Maribeth’s lesson and implement it. I’d like to also get parents involved as well to help the research. I’m have high hopes for the scaling of this lesson. I envision that many colleges/research facilities will volunteer to analyze student samples, and with them being so willing to volunteer, teachers will as well! I’d love to see citizen science in every classroom around the world!