The Kenan Fellowship has changed me in so many different ways it would be impossible to try and address them all. Below is my attempt at addressing some of the bigger changes I have experienced due to going through the Kenan Fellowship Program.

Collaborating with peers: As the lone physics teacher at my school, working with a PLT is not something I get to do very often. I work with other teachers and get to bounce wonderful ideas off of each other, but I rarely get to work with someone in my own content. After participating in the Kenan Fellows it became more clear to me that this was important and I sought out another physics teacher to work with. Strangely enough, the only person who responded to my PLT cry was also a Kenan Fellow! She went through the program a few years ago and we hit it off right away! It helped take some of the stress off of teaching because we planned together and wrote tests together even though we taught at different schools.

Discovering new talents: The Kenan Fellows Program helped me recognize how important it is to lean on your fellow teachers. I made sure to bring that thought process back to my school. It has made it that much easier to succeed in my own classroom when I have sought out colleagues with strengths that line up with my weaknesses. As for my own new talents, curriculum writing is not one of them, but this whole process has definitely improved my ability to be more creative in my own lesson plans. I struggled with writing my project: I had never written something so intensive and didn’t have the structure in place that I probably needed. Even after struggling through it, I have noticed throughout the school year I have created new and fun lessons that I might not have tried to do had I not had the curriculum writing experience.

Learning about STEM careers: This has always been a focus of mine, albeit an indirect one. I have been trying to increase the number of students that take physics at my high school and part of the low number is that students don’t know what it is or how it relates to what they want to do in life. After working with the Kenan Fellows Program, I have a better idea of how I can bring in STEM careers to my school and how those individuals can directly impact my own program.