The Art of Teaching

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...