In this picture two of my students are looking at a living mite on the microscope while Dr. Dan Fergus explains what they are seeing.
The media upload was being funky. I have a few more pics to share but these are the only ones that would upload.
Dan tells a joke about mites, and the kids aren’t sure if they should laugh or not…
The Kenan Fellow/Mentor partnership is the foundation of our program and what we do. What does this parternship mean to you?
Obviously this program does not work without a mentor. The mentor is here to give the teachers the valuable science experience that we all signed up for. I was really worried coming into the program that my mentor would not be very patient with my lack of lab experience, or would talk over my head with science concepts and terms that I am unfamiliar with. This was not at all the case. Dan worked extra hard along the way to make sure that he wasn’t talking over our heads or dumbing down his work. He explained and demonstrated lab procedures over and over to us until we felt comfortable doing them ourselves. But I think the part about working with Dan that made the experience the best is when he said that he didn’t want to be called a mentor, that didn’t quite feel right. He said he felt more like the science collaborator, and we were the education collaborators. That “mentor” made it sound like he was above us when really he viewed us all on the same level, just with different expertise.
Another level to the relationship is that he was willing to come to our schools and meet with our students. My students were so excited to meet “a real scientist” that they are still talking about it. They have been asking questions about the mites, and when will Dan have our results and be back to see us. I think this is really the coolest part. Science doesn’t seem so far away. The kids are very excited about knowing a scientists and working with one and being a part of the experiment. Science has been made real for them, and they love it. Even the students that told me they don’t like science, or they are creeped out by the face mites. They all seem much more engaged and willing to learn now that they share a piece of this big puzzle.
Each of the three professional development institutes was different, but great. The first one really felt like a great pick-me-up after a long year of teaching. I left NCCAT feeling valued, empowered, and encouraged. I remember thinking “yes, this is why I chose this profession! Teaching is fun, and it’s about making learning fun for kids.” The second PDI really helped me make the transition from our awesome summer experience back into the classroom. We were asked to think realistically about our experiences and the things we had learned this summer and how we were going to take them into the classroom in the fall. At the third we were really challenged to think of ourselves as leaders, not just in our classrooms and schools but our local communities and beyond. Leading up to it, I was not very excited about the third Professional Development Institute. I didn’t think I was interested in the speakers or the theme of the weekend. Leaving, though, I understood exactly why were presented with these things and how we can use our positions to influence change.
Looking back, I fully appreciate the way the PDI’s were laid out. The order and timing of them makes sense for cultivating teacher leaders. You built us up with the first, challenged us to make change in our classrooms with the second, and then challenged us to make change in our communities and state with the third. The current state of education in NC is pretty bad. There is a teacher shortage and with the demands and expectations growing each day, more teachers are leaving. It is going to take some strong, passionate teacher leaders to make positive change happen. Kenan Fellows are just the passionate, strong bunch to do that. I loved learning about the opportunities to make my voice heard.
The KF experience as a whole has shown me that being a teacher is not only about what happens in my classroom. It is about what I do to better my students lives, and to better my profession. Creating quality lessons to be shared across the state, becoming a leader in my school for other science educators and using my voice to reach out to law makers to make positive changes are all things that I have learned how to do through this experience. I am so sad that the Professional Development Institutes are over! 🙁
Social Media in the school/classroom is a touchy subject. On one hand they are a great tool to reach kids using a familiar platform and incorporating some fun. On the other hand there are many privacy and safety concerns with social media that school systems must take into account. Many families may not want or allow their children to be on social media because of the dangers of predators or cyber bullying. Many school systems air on the side of caution and allow that decision to be made in the home. This allows parents to make those choices for their children and removes responsibility from the school system.
School systems also recognize that teachers are people too, and allowing students and teachers to connect on social media may not be a good idea. Hopefully teachers would not use a personal account to connect with students, but I have seen it done by colleagues. Students immediately have access to information about your personal life and how you spend your free time, this information may not be appropriate for school aged children either.
There are advantages to using social media in school though. Students can quickly respond to prompts from teachers via twitter, share media files relating to school topics with teachers on facebook or twitter, or take photos and caption them with photo sharing services like instagram or flickr. The opportunities for social media use are endless in the classroom. Some school systems embrace this and see using these tools in school as an opportunity to also teach students about internet safety and digital citizenship. Most school systems ask that we teach these ideas to our students, and many teachers see this as another thing to do with our very limited time with our students. By intertwining school work with the digital world teachers can teach these important life lessons while also teaching content.
I think programs such as Edmodo and Google Classroom are great ways to protect students but also allow them a collaborative space online. Only those invited to these sites can join them, but once inside they appear and function like social media. If approved by the school system these sites can provide a way for teachers to teach the same “safety and digital citizenship” lessons knowing that they are not potentially putting students in harms way by being on an open site like Facebook or Twitter.
This fellowship has been the best thing to happen to me professionally. I have learned so much and feel regenerated to continue learning and teaching. The new knowledge that I am most excited about is flipping my classroom. I have heard about it, listened to teachers from other schools talk about it and finally after this experience I think I have the knowledge, skills, and confidence to make it happen. Through flipping my class I believe I will have more time to engage my students in hands on activities and labs including CITIZEN SCIENCE projects. I also think that through watching the videos and discussing content in class students will retain more information and not get bored doing it.
I also want to try to work on some grants for my classroom and department. Our school does not have a great deal of money for classroom technology. Previous principals spent technology money on installing SMARTboards in most of the classrooms. SMARTboards are nice and convenient, but they are teacher focused. I would rather have some technology to put in my students hands, to empower their learning. So, I will use some of the tips learned in the grant writing sessions to find some money to buy technology for my students to use.
The Students Discover project is all about getting kids involved in real science. Either the collection or analysis of data or both are what students will be doing for the project. There are of course challenges to overcome when thinking of getting students involved and even bigger challenges trying to spread the lessons to other areas of the country or world. I hope that we have been able to think of most of the issues and find ways to address them. But I know that in the coming years the next set of fellows will be able to build upon our work and make the lessons stronger and better.
Mite DNA is the key piece to the mite project. Obtaining it cleanly from people and sending it to a lab to be extracted and sequenced are the first and biggest steps of the project. These are also probably the most difficult steps. The average middle school science classroom does not have have the materials for obtaining DNA, extracting such a small amount of DNA, and sequencing it. Access to a lab that can and will do these steps will be critical for this project to grow. Willis, Kayla and I have access to Dan and the Rob Dunn labs at NCSU to complete those tasks and share the data with us. These labs do not have the capacity or the funds to do this for every school that wants to participate, so one condition for success is finding other labs that will complete this piece for other schools.
Along the same lines, teachers need to purchase the materials to sample the mite DNA from students. The materials are not expensive but they are an added cost to the teacher or school. And any lab that completes the process will also have added expenses for helping with the project. Unlike the other Students Discover projects there are a lot of added costs with the mite project that may make it more difficult to scale.
Another key component is the data analysis. The labs are going to return to us a set of DNA sequences for our students to take a look at. Dan has taught us how to use free software to take the sequences and turn them into a phylogeny that will make the data more useful and meaningful. The issue here is that this is a program that teachers will have to take the time to download, and learn how to use. We are creating a guide to help teachers learn the program, but this is still something they will need to work with the program in order to walk students through using it.
My externship provided me with many opportunities for growth this summer. I think my biggest AHA! moment and take away from the summer is the excitement and wonder that should be associated with teaching and learning science. I learned through several opportunities at the museum to let my students wonder and explore the world around them to bring that excitement back. I am very excited to see if allowing students more time to wonder and explore if they will have more interested and better grades in science class. I hope that more enjoyment will mean harder work and better grades for most of my students. And on a larger scale I hope I can excite a life long interest in science.
M-I-T-E
“We hit the Kenan jackpot!” Was my reflection during our second of three Lunches with Liz at the museum. I knew that we were in for something special when I found out about the Students Discover project, but I didn’t know how awesome this project is! Working with 12 other like-minded middle school teachers has been such a great experience. We have been able to compare experiences and bounce ideas off of each other about our projects and lessons. Being in the lab with 2 other teachers helped us talk out the connections to our curriculum (because they aren’t always so obvious).
The goal of the students discover project is to create lessons in citizen science that are scale-able so that they can be easily adapted in other classrooms. I think it may take some time to find out if we were ultimately successful when we find out when and where these lessons start to be used.
The biggest success, thus far, of the project and lesson plan writing piece is what has come about through collaboration, with the 2 other teachers on the project, the 11 other teachers as students discover and the 4 post-docs and other scientists at the museum. I think we have really produced some good strong plans and activities that are going to be engaging and exciting for our students and hopefully students around the state, country, world and universe (according to Rob Dunn). Each of us have heard about the lessons created in the other labs and we want to use them in our classes this year as well. I am planning to teach not only my mite lessons but incorporating the sharks teeth and fossil lessons into my curriculum too.
Team MITE working on our lesson plans.
There are a couple of challenges in writing these plans, I think we have overcome them through the collaborations and conversations. The first challenge is that we are working with mites which are basically invisible, and then to take it to another level we are working with their DNA which is definitely invisible. Middle school students have a hard time understanding things that they cannot see and observe. Dan, my mentor, was really worried that it would be hard to get students excited and involved because they can’t see any of the processes that are happening. Another challenge going along with this is that classroom teachers don’t have the equipment that is in the lab. We can’t do DNA extractions, PCR’s, gel electrophoresis, and sequence DNA with our students because we don’t have the equipment and materials need for all of these complicated processes. We will be able to do DNA extraction with strawberries so that students can experience that process, and show them online interactive virtual labs so that students can see the process and understand what is going on at the lab with their mite samples.
Another big challenge for us is actually writing the lessons. I know what I would do in my class and how I would do it. The challenge is not knowing how to write lesson plans for others to view and follow, I am very unsure of the words and phrases I should use. I also realize as I am writing the rough draft that there are several materials that need to be added in order to give a complete lesson to others to use. What started out as a simple 2 or 3 day lesson has become a very large complicated document that has several add ons and extra documents attached so that it will be complete.
Connecting my externship to my classroom is going to be challenging, but do able. Pieces of the work I am doing fit in to several areas of the NC Essential Standards for 8th grade. So, my current plan is to have a series of lessons scattered through the year that bring in mites to teach or reinforce the content.
There are many pieces of the mite project. The main one is the citizen science piece. I plan to introduce citizen science at the beginning of the school year and actually do citizen science with my students by collecting samples from the willing students and send the samples back to the lab.
Later in the year I can use tools that I have learned about in the lab to show my students that real science is still concerned with the topics we talk about. My mentor has taught a couple of college classes and has ideas for lessons that he has used in the past which can be tweaked for a younger audience. For example, he has a lesson using the phylogeny of HIV DNA to show how to disease moved through a population. I am planning to use this idea, but simplify it for a lesson during my diseases unit.
Even later in the year, when we get our class data and DNA sequences of mites back we will use computer programs to create phylogenies with our mites. I plan to use this lesson during my evolution unit. In the past my evolution unit has focused on fossil records and geologic time. I am excited to add in information about creating phylogenies so that my students will be able to see another side of evolution. I think that this will give my students a little charge of curiosity and excite them about a topic that seems distant and finished to them.
Using the mites throughout the year and connecting the many pieces of my curriculum to them will show my students that scientists use all areas of science in their work.
The biggest Technology Challenge I face in my classroom is lack of technology. I do have a SMARTboard and a couple of computers in the room, but my students need more than chance encounters with technology. Instruction could be so much more efficient if my students had access to computers in class daily. They could be doing research and creating presentations, using simulations for difficult to understand concepts and blogging about these experiences.
My goal for this coming year is to have a BYOD classroom. After seeing some of the tech tools and talking with other teachers at NCCAT I decided that this is the best way for me to make use of those tools. I am really excited to use some of the great tools that we learned about to make my classroom more exciting and engaging.