I have honestly neglected keeping up with my blog since the last Professional Advancement session with the other Kenans in Raleigh….back in July! I have been travelling and getting ready for the new school year. This year, I have picked up a few new roles (6th grade team lead, cooperating teacher to a fantastic student teacher, and bringing on two new science teachers in the school) so I am definitely busy! However, I am beyond excited to implement my Kenan Fellows lessons into my Earth/Ecosystems units this year.

I have just finished my first week of school and have a stellar group of sixth graders coming in. The fact that they are going to impact ‘Real Science’ is very appealing to them. I will be teaching 4 sections of AIG (Academically and Intellectually Gifted) students and two Traditional sections of science this year. With this mix, I will have students who have been engaged in a lot of science both inside and outside of school and are already eager to begin this work, and alternatively, I have students who NEED to be exposed to this hands on, minds on experience that I will provide this year. I can not imagine the doors that will be opened for my students when they see that they can do all of these things and can contribute to REAL science at the tender age of eleven years old. I also can not wait to share this experience with my student teacher. She has many ideas and is very flexible with her teaching so I feel she will take these citizen science activities and go for it! She will be involved with this so much that hopefully she will be able to do some of these things in her own classroom in the future!

In all, I am pumped for this school year and can’t wait to implement my Kenan Fellows lessons to see the wheels turning in all of my students. I can’t wait to share the awesome experience that I had this summer with all of them!