The Kenan Fellow/Mentor partnership is the foundation of our program.

What does this partnership mean to you?

This partnership has helped me to gain connections with people who I did not know.  I have met people and companies who are on the cutting edge to technology and research.

• Did you work with a single mentor or multiple professionals? I worked with multiple professionals from Dr. Veety and Dr. Jur to others at NC State who have helped me in my quest in being a Kenan Fellow.
• Describe a time when your mentor helped you understand something or helped you have an “ah-ha” moment.  During my internship, Dr. Vetty and Dr. Jur helped me to understand the process of conceptualizing what I and my team wanted to do with starting our project.
• Discuss the working relationship between you and your mentor. Did you work side-by-side? Did he/she allow you to work on your own? It was a combination of both of these scenario, they allowed me to work independently and in some cases I worked with my team and by myself.
• What do you consider to be the lasting impact of this relationship? The lasting impact is the connections I have made and the resources that I have utilized not only in my classroom but even in my own household.
• Do you plan to work together after the fellowship ends? Yes, I plan on using my mentors and the connections made to further educating my students and myself.

You are six weeks into the school year.  Describe one new tool or strategy you have implemented.  One new strategy that I have implemented is the use of  student selected project based learning projects.

• How and why you are using it?  I am using this in my class as a way to have students earn a grade based on the project completed.
• What impact is it having on you and your students? The students are now leading the way and taking ownership of their assignments and their projects.

While going through this internship experience, I believe that I have come up with a number of ways to use my experience.  For one, I have written my lesson plans around the subject that I teach.  I will use the temperature or energy harvesting sensors to add to my greenhouse.  I will harvest the energy coming from the sun to show students how this can be done.

I was member of Team 5.  We ultimately developed a UV sun hat.  This was a product that took on various challenges which include the researching of the benefits of one aspect of the product and another problem dealt with getting the sensor light to work in various conditions in the sunlight.  As we kept trying to get it to work, we came upon programming issues as well.  But, we finally got this product to work and it turned out to be a success.

My internship experience will benefit my mentor’s organization by providing a different them with a prospective to the team.  What I mean by that, just as we were selected to be apart of the Kenan Fellowship and put into various groups – our unique backgrounds  added a prospective which may not have been derived from –  if these groups were made up of similar background team members.  I believe that I add a prospective that lends itself thinking outside of the box and also providing incite to the project that we will ultimately develop.

• List where you teach: I teach at Longview Alternative School in Raleigh
• What you teach:  I teach Horticulture I, II and Exploring Ag.
• How long have you have been teaching.  I have been teaching 10 year
• Why you wanted to become a Kenan Fellow? I wanted to become a Kenan Fellow to improve my teaching and to help me network as an educator.  Also, to receive the resources that are offered through this program.  The goal is to become a better educator and to be recognized as such.

When I initially received the internship I had thought that the area of the internship would match what I teach as an educator.  Once, I saw that I was in an area that was outside my comfort zone ( a bit), I started to question myself about actually if they had made a mistake in the process.  As I attended the initial sessions, I soon realized that that the internship was put together to help broaden the desired effects of the finished product which is a wearable device.  Then, as we broke up into teams, I then further realized that as individual we had some great ideas that  each of us had to be sound boards and ultimately develop a product.

Now, my goal as an educator – I can now relate what I am doing in the my team to goals that I will develop for my students wearable device project.  Whether it be a Arduino or Lily Pad project – this whole process will help me develop a winning plan.

The highlight of my week at NCCAT was the session Twitter and my PLN.

• How do you plan to implement something you learned at NCCAT in your classroom? I am planning on having my students to set up their own twitter account and then use these accounts to document and communicate back with my students.
• Which session was your least favorite? Why culture matters was probably my least favorite.  Why? Even thought I enjoyed the session, I felt that this session was going to be more personalized to North Carolina students and I thought it was going to entail more solutions on how we as teachers would work with the various cultures.  She did go over this, but I thought it could have been deeper.
• How has the week at NCCAT compared with other PD opportunities you have attended?  The week at NCCAT was very intense.  I don’t remember PD sessions in the past that presented such intensity.  There were alot of sessions and workshop that provided quite abit of information.
• Which session did you find most useful and why? The session on Marketing yourself as an educator.  In the past, I have thought back on situation in which I did not market my agriculture program.  I could have done a better job showing what I have done and presented pictures to support the success of my program.

Thanks,

Patrick Faulkner                                                                                                                     Kenan Fellow 2016