I have enjoyed creating my product from my internship experience.  I have experienced challenges and successes.

Challenges:

• One of my main challenges I have faced during my internship is trying to decide out of all the information I have learned which pieces or parts am I going to use to help create my product.  I have learned so many different ways employees in a health care setting use daily math.
• Another challenge I faced when creating my product was being able to write it with enough explanation that any teacher could pick the lesson up and teach it without the same experience I have had here at the hospital.  Making sure I included all details and also provide enough background information that the teacher could teach the lesson as if they had had the same Kenan Fellows Experience.

Successes:

•  One success I have had while creating my product is the excitement of being able  to bring what I have learned back into the classroom and creating a product that will engage my students.
• Another success has been the helpfulness of my mentor and her guidance throughout my entire experience.  She has been wiling to do what ever and go out of her way to help me create an engaging, hands-on lesson. Not only has she helped me create my product and give me ideas when I would get to a point that I could not think of anything else to do but also help me coordinate a Health Care Job Fair for my 8th graders.  This will give my students an opportunity to speak with someone from every department here at the hospital and learn what they do, what type of education they need for that specific job, income, and etc.

My internship will benefit my mentor’s organization in several ways.  By allowing an educator to come into Vidant Duplin and work in different departments will help the employees evaluate their own knowledge of their profession.  The employees all know how to do their job and do it well.  However, when they have to be able to explain it to someone else, it makes them think about what they are doing and why they are doing what they are doing.  When I was going through the different departments, I had several employees tell me they had to sit down and think about where  and how they used math because they know they use it daily but had not had to explain it to anyone in a while.  It’s a way to help the employees to keep all of their knowledge about their profession fresh.

My internship also benefits the hospital by introducing the students to health related careers early.  Most students have a general idea of what the major health care professions do but some they have never heard of or have no idea what they do.  By bringing in an educator into the health field, it will allow the educator to become familiar with different health care jobs that they can introduce to their students.  This will help give the students knowledge of different types of health care jobs that they may want to look into themselves and hopefully purse after high school.  This will help increase students who go into the health field because they are aware of all the opportunities at an early age.

I have enjoyed my internship at Vidant Duplin Hospital.  I have been able to spend time working in different departments throughout the hospital and learning  different ways each department uses mathematics. I plan on taking what I have learned in each department and developing a lesson plan that fits into my curriculum.  This will provide my students with real life situations and introduce them to the different jobs relating to the health field.  During my internship I have also learned work skills other professionals need that are outside of the education field.  I am planning on teaching my students some of these work skills to help them prepare for different professions they may be interested in.  Being able to provide my students these opportunities will broaden their knowledge about real life situations and health care professions they may not have ever heard about or would have gotten the opportunity to see if I had not planned to bring it back into my classroom.

“For the things we have to learn before we can do, we learn by doing.” ~ Aristotle

I am an 8th grade Math and Math 1 teacher (formerly known as Algebra 1) at B.F. Grady Elementary in Duplin County.  I have previously taught different grades; 3rd grade  for a year and 5th grade for 2 years.  This will be my 5th year teaching 8th grade and my 8th year teaching all together.

When I heard about the opportunity of becoming a Kenan Fellow, I was very excited and could not wait to apply.  I wanted to become a Kenan Fellow to be able to collaborate with other educators who have the same passion about education as I and also to be able to learn how to incorporate real life situations into my daily lessons.  I feel that this experience will help improve me as a professional and as an educator.

My experience at NCCAT was AMAZING!  It is really hard to highlight only a few things from my week spent at NCCAT.  This was by far the best professional development opportunity I have every had.  We were all treated with respect by everyone in the facility and they did everything possible to make us feel like we were all professionals.  It was also an opportunity to work with other teachers who have the same passion for education and are wiling to do whatever they can to make education in North Carolina better.  We were able to share ideas, lessons, visions, and so much more.  It was an experience I will never forget.    If all professional developments could be this successful, I feel that more teachers would feel positive and eager to learn to help education in NC.

I attend several sessions which most of them I learned something new that I really want to try and implement in my classroom. One of my favorite sessions was Welcoming English Language Learners to our Classroom and our Content. This sessions was really helpful for me because my school is 65% ELL leaners.  I plan on using a Math Constructive Conversation Skills Poster in my classroom we were given in the session.  The poster provides the students with sentence starters and response starters to help them build solutions, ideas, and understandings. Another concept I learned and want to use is spending more time building background knowledge before moving into a concept.  I want to build the background knowledge by connect it to something they know and understand in their language, find motivational factors, and vocabulary.  Another session I found very helpful was Increasing student engagement & developing problem solving skills through the implantation of STEM focused instruction.  I participated in several group activities that I plan on doing with my students at the beginning of the year to help them learn how to work with others and to increase engagement.  The activities will help to teach the students how to focus, think, reason, apply strategies and collaborate.

The only session I feel was not that useful for me was Over Time and Space: Visualizing Data and Documents for Inquiry Based Learning.  I feel that this session was more geared or useful for Social Studies or Science classes.  It is hard to incorporate time lines into a math classroom unless I we were doing a study on Mathematicians or when different concepts were discovered.  I just feel that it is hard to incorporate timelines into math.

From my Kenan Fellowship, I hope to gain real world applications that I can bring into my classroom to help my students build a deeper understanding of the mathematical concepts.  I feel that being able to give my students real world examples will get them motivated and interested in learning.  I  also feel that the collaboration with other Kenan Fellows will have the biggest impact on my teaching career because I will be able to share ideas, lessons, activities, and much more with professionals who have the same passion about Education.