It is amazing that the year is coming to a close… I remember when I received my Kenan Fellowship Packet with our year-long outlined agenda, March seemed in the distant future. The summer externship months flew by, as did fall semester, and now spring! As an individual very fearful of deadlines, I began brainstorming and outlining my lesson plans at night after finishing each day at Wright Foods. It is amazing to look back and see the evolutionary process- knowing where my curriculum first began, and seeing the final product that was submitted just weeks ago. While teachers are always writing lessons, designing units, and making changes, this Kenan Curriculum is still one of the longest standing lesson development processes I have ever had. This is a curriculum that has been in the works for 8 months!!! With each review, I found areas to adjust and improve, and even when I thought it was a well-organized and thought out lesson plan, the reviewer notes provided by the Kenan staff were excellent and on point! Their outside perspective proved to be so valuable since one of the greatest challenges about writing a lesson plan for others is ensuring that it is easily followed when it is your first time reading and implementing it.

I was very pleased with how my curriculum went during Fall semester implementation. Some of the areas that were awkward and not as organized as I thought were clearly seen this Fall when I piloted the lessons in class, and the immediate feedback from class discussions with my students provided exceptional guidance in how to improve my lessons. With the implementation this Spring, the lessons have progressed more smoothly, but I am still see areas where improvement can be made; something I am sure I will continue to see for years to come!

As part of my Noyce Grant, I presented my curriculum to several high schools in the surrounding region. Teachers seemed to be very interested in the ideas that were presented due to the unique connection that they had with local industry and real-world application. These teachers were encouraged to take my lessons, use them in their own classrooms, and adapt my lessons in any way that would best accommodate their classrooms, their instructional style, and their student population. As I move forward, and present on a larger platform, I hope that other teachers throughout the state will be encouraged to not only reach out into their communities and find the applicable connections between their instructional curriculum and the local industries, but I hope that they will use my curriculum as a spring board to a new interactive instructional teaching style and format.