The Kenan Fellowship program has been an amazing experience thus far! This program has introduced me to so many wonderful apps and programs that can easily be incorporated into the classroom! I have been introduced to amazing teachers that have their own powerful store of knowledge, classroom experience, and “tricks of the trade.” This program has truly provided the building block necessary to reach your goals, but more importantly, it provided me with the tools to surpass my goals and create new ones that I had not even thought about before! When you are surrounded by exceptional teachers who are inspired, encouraged, and striving to truly make a difference, it provide the greatest support system that a new teacher could ask for!! Through the professional advancement sessions, I learned that there is amazing instruction going on throughout North Carolina, and I wanted to tap in as well. I feel very confident about the Chemistry curriculum and the way that I teach it, but I new that I was not giving my best efforts in Earth Science and our professional advancement institute presenters and my fellow Kenan peers provided me with some wonderful ideas. Not only were actual suggestions provided, but it is the fact that everyone was supportive and encouraging- promoting you to push forward, try new things, and get excited about all of the possibilities!!

I want to be clear, the Kenan Fellowship summer experience and professional advancement institutes provided so much for me as a person, teacher, and leader. All of this support and information culminated together to make me feel encouraged, inspired, and excited about the upcoming year! I am positive, I plan to continue to be positive, and I plan to be positive about new methods of instruction, different activities that I have never completed before, and anything else that comes my way! Unfortunately you can get easily get down on yourself or a class, and my goal is to be positive; a self-fulfilling prophecy for myself and my classes that it will be a great year!

As my summer experience comes to an end this week, I am very excited to begin this school year! My how time flies!!!! There are so many ideas that I have for the upcoming year from all that I have learned at the PAIs and from designing and writing my Kenan Curriculum. I fully expect Earth Science to become a much more interactive and engaging environment where my students can make more emotional connections to nature and the beautiful world around them. I think my students will really enjoy iNaturalist and the identification process, and I truly believe that the students will become excited, engaged, and develop a sense of ownership for their natural community. I want all of my classes to develop a stronger sense of worth in nature and in turn within themselves…I want them to become citizen scientists today and remain citizen scientists tomorrow. With regard to my Chemistry and Research Methods students, I believe they will be interested in the Kenan Curriculum that I have been designing–I have really tried to take manufacturing from the large scale to the small, where students can dig deep into the product formulation and production concepts and recognize that science and math are embedded within it all!

I know my students will have a heightened educational experience this year! This will partly be due to the amazing technology-based apps, gadgets, and tools that I have learned about, but most importantly it will be due to the emotional and intellectual growth that I have personally experienced. When do students become the most engaged and inspired? When they are encouraged and supported. This Kenan Fellowship summer experience provided me with the ability to provide the needed support and encouragement, the ability to try new things and promote true inquiry, to be able to increase the level of interaction not only within the classroom walls but also outside in our school yard… our woods… our community. I know that my students will have a great school year- I know that I will impact them in a positive way- and I know that the Kenan Fellowship Program and the amazing mentors at Wright Foods have given me the confidence to say this!