I am in this fellowship to impact students. As a passionate science educator and STEM advocate, all things are done with my students in mind. I have been an 8th grade science teacher for ten years and I strive to become a better educator every day. I am constantly looking for new ways to get students excited about science and STEM. I believe in a hands-on, student-centered classroom, and this project, “Surf and Turf”, will help me to actively engage all students.
Being a Kenan Fellow will support my professional growth by giving me the experience to observe what happens in real-world settings. I will also learn more content to better support my students. I believe the whole experience will help make content more relevant for students.
This experience will help me to become a more effective teacher because it will provide me with lessons that are created through collaboration with researchers and scientists in the field. This fellowship will keep me invigorated about teaching, and more specifically, it will improve my curriculum. This experience will provide a new and different way for my students to learn about agriculture, hydrology and ecology. I will use this as a way to engage my students and promote STEM learning.
It will support classroom instruction by providing resources and connections that can be used for my classroom in form of lessons and speakers, I hope :). It will support my school system because I will commit to training other teachers in my district about these resources.
Kenan Fellows is a unique network of teachers who are committed to improving educate for all students. Being around like-minded teachers will help me to be more motivated this year and give me an amazing network to reach out to for ideas. Other teachers in my community or district will benefit from my Kenan fellowship because I will commit to training and collaborating with these teachers. I am passionate about keeping teachers and students engaged in learning. STEM education is an exciting way to accomplish this goal. I can only begin to imagine how many students and educators could be impacted by this experience.
This specific fellowship is an amazing opportunity that is also a perfect fit for 8th grade Science because we study hydrology, ecology and biotechnology. Therefore, over 50% of my curriculum would be directly correlated to this project. I would hope that being with experts in the field will improve my skills as teacher and leader in my school and community.