The Art of Teaching

        This will be my fourth reflective blog and it is amazing to see the growth and improvement I have had thus far. While at times it has been a difficult journey, I have learned that I take criticism well. My face might not look like it while I am processing what is being said to me but I internalize the feedback I am given to allow for me to better myself as a teacher. Over the past two weeks, I have learned that things will not always be perfect. In my forensics classes, my kiddos just started their unit on impressions and we started to look at how a cast is made of a shoeprint using dental stone, dirt, and some water.         With this being my first time working with these materials, I was not expecting perfect results from each lab group but I was hopeful that I would at least get some good results. My first class of students casts looked like a pile of mush. At first I was disappointed that things did not work out and felt like I failed my students in not providing them wit

This will be my third reflective blog that I have made for the school year thus far. As I have mentioned in my previous blog entries, it has been a rollercoaster. I have been preparing for an observation with School A and I have felt a great deal of stress given that I had to write my first observation for a student being unsafe in the science classroom. I was in a state of confusion and panic because I have never had to write one before within this scenario and was unsure of what to do. I came to my principal to figure out how to document this and then I found myself arguing back and forth about the phone policies in the school. While my principal was upset that a student in my class filmed what happened (misuse of flammable chemicals) I was thankful to the student who filmed because it validated everything I said within the behavioral referral. At the end of the conference, my principal was thankful that I came to clarify what to do so that I knew the correct procedures were being

Over the past few weeks, I have gotten great feedback from my first observation with my principal and administration. Overall, they were proud of how the lesson went but had a few suggestions for improvement. One of these things was to be mindful for how I question probe my students to allow for them to be prepared to defend the answer that they gave for a response to the bell ringer (drill) exercise. In addition, I have gotten feedback to find ways to quickly get my students into their seats and ready to begin the lesson activities. Since receiving this feedback, there was a professional development day in Harford County on November 4 th . Due to the notes of improvement for question probing, note taking, etc., I attended three workshops where I got to learn about the new STEM cases that allow for students to be able to step into the role of a scientist to determine how the content learned in class relates to phenomena in the real world. The second workshop I attended allowed for

With me being a new teacher and especially to younger high school students, I find myself in a position where that emphasis of building relationships with my students is crucial. Due to me teaching two sections of biology, I find myself needing to take longer than expected to truly get to know my students in regard to how they learn, what motivates them to learn, and how do they process information. To gain insight regarding this information, I had my students complete a student survey at the beginning of the school year where they got to rank themselves on their skills in reading, comprehension, math, and writing. While I am aware that my students could merely tell me whatever it is, they want me to read, I encouraged my students to please be honest as I will need this information to determine the nature in which class will be ran.   As the first quarter comes to a close, I have found that the following routine I have established has been helpful in determining the pace of the class

Being a new teacher, I talked with my students about STEM Education as being a method in which I am learning how to foster young minds in Science while allowing my students to make sense of the world around them. The one thing I wondered is how come my students think the concepts I have taught them thus far is only applicable to the discipline of Science. Since the first day of school, my students have been learning about how everything we learn in class connects to the real world in some way, shape, or form. The most recent example I have is where my students are using cellular organelles and are relating the function of those organelles to their technical areas. For some of my students, this assignment came easy and were able to see for how the cell membrane functions in the cell to control what comes in and out of the cell and that relates to a fence of classroom door because all of those items also share the same function. However, when one of my students was unsure of how th

Over the past four weeks, I have gotten to see how various STEM practices and techniques can influence education in research, instruction, and observation. For my professional development plan, I have joined a team with my department where we work with cross cutting concepts that are presented in the curriculum for Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). The way that my department teaches with this technique is to provide students with a packet for each unit. This packet will be used as a one stop shop to have students’ notes, classwork, homework assignments all in one place. As students further their academics, they will receive a packet for chemistry, integrated physics and chemistry, or physics (depending on how students perform in Biology). In the packet, there is the list of objectives that will be covered during the class period. Next to that textbox is a blank text box where students will be required to fill out the cross-cutting concept. To complete this task, students wi

If I was explaining STEM education to a friend or family member, I would just explain that it is a more modernized way of teaching that depends on integrating content from numerous disciplines. Within the acronym, there are the four disciplines of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Students whom are the participants of STEM education are being given a chance to connect the content they are learning to the real world. Generally, I view educators as being the one who prepares our students for the road ahead. Therefore, I view STEM educators as the individuals who will develop our youth into being critical thinkers that will be able to apply their habits of success to their aspiring career fields post-graduation. Based on the criteria that I had mentioned previously, I do think that STEM education is extremely important for not only educating adolescents but also adults. As we all know the world is ever changing and is adapting to the wants and needs of citi