Reflective Blog on STEM Education

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 will look through the lesson activities that we have completed for that class where they will determine which cross cutting concept relates the best to the in-class lesson. For instance, currently my students in Biology are learning about homeostasis, feedback, and the body systems found in the human body. Due to this being the current subject matter in class, my students were quickly able to figure out that the cross-cutting concept that relates to our lesson are systems and system models. However, I then ask for students to then expand upon their answer to include the vital organs that exist in a body system in order to allow for the body system to be able to support a living organism.

As I attended several professional development meetings prior to the start of the school year, habits of success were discussed at great lengths. With the school I work at being a technical school, there is a heavy emphasis of students learning not only how to be successful in the classroom but also to be successful upon graduation when they move on to the workforce and higher education. This aligns perfectly with the research I have been conducting over the past few weeks because STEM education also focuses on students being able to be employable upon graduation. While the concepts of work ethic, preparedness, timeliness, respect, and organization may seem self-explanatory, these are traits we expect out of all our students and their future employers will expect the same. To hold students accountable for upholding these principles, the habits of success is formulated to twenty points biweekly and will accumulate to account for five percent of students’ quarterly grades. This is similar to the professionalism score that I had received while getting my undergraduate degree with Stevenson where that score accounted for three percent of my overall grade. During my planning period, I sit in the planning room that is directly next to where my department chair teaches. As I listened to him teach, I gained a lot of helpful insights that allow for me to determine the best way to serve my students. For instance, students have a one to one ratio for technology where students will be given access to their own computer to use for the duration of the class period. When students are working on the laptops, they are navigating through the its Learning page at their own pace while working in their collaborative groups. The most recent example of this is when I had my students complete an interactive assignment where they got to look at each of the human body systems to view the organs, tissues, and relate the information they found back to levels of organization of a living system. These further drive home the importance of cross cutting concepts as they are always present in science.   

            While the idea of utilizing cross cutting concepts to allow students to form connection between classroom content and the real world are great, I am concerned about there being a gap in STEM learning for my students in my Biology courses. The bulk of my concern rest in the idea of the school I currently work for being a magnet school within the public-school system. Due to the ideals that students whom are accepted to my school come from different backgrounds and different middle schools. For instance, one child in my larger Biology class had an awesome booklet that contain all of the concepts that the child has learned in the seventh grade. Knowing that most of my other students did not come from the same middle school, I am aware that there is a disadvantage for these students. The one child who has this booklet can take a glance at the subject matter being taught in class and have additional resources when help is needed. As a department, we have all made unit packets for our students (both in print and digital format) to provide students a resource to study from prior to taking the MISA exam.