[…]the regional teacher observation group I helped organize helped me appreciate the importance of working with “machines.” How I came to see the machines around me Sometimes, the work of a group is reliant upon the superhuman efforts of a few individuals manually catching every ball in the air and tying each loose end. There is no defined process; it is just “Alex’s thing.” Nobody really knows how he does it, but thank goodness he does! The group’s outcomes are dependent on a few specific crank-turners; without them, nothing moves, and the group ceases. We all know these sorts of […]
[…]of 2014 he pursued his life-long dream of teaching by entering the Secondary Master of Arts with Certification program at the University of Michigan. Upon completion of the program, he accepted a full time chemistry teacher position at Belleville High School, in Belleville, Michigan. In addition to teaching, Anthony helps coach the Science Olympiad team at his school. Hobbies When Anthony is not teaching, he enjoys learning how to cook, reading interesting articles related to chemistry and education, and helping out at the University of Michigan’s School of Education to get the next generation of science teachers pumped and ready […]
[…]in general. In PD sessions like the one I described above, we teachers are expected to learn “new knowledge” and incorporate it into our work. PD in this sense is a form of filling in the gaps or adding new practices, so-called “additive PD.” Additive PD leads to an emotional response: an overwhelming feeling of needing to do more and profound insecurity about what to actually do. Eventually, we might also experience feelings of defeat because our learning was so superficial that our implementation lacked staying power. Integrated STEM instruction as a transformative PD experience In contrast to additive PD, […]
[…]wonderful way of looking at the natural world, and ought to be accessible to anyone capable of asking questions of ‘how’ and ‘why.’ As a teacher, it is my goal and challenge to uncover that capability within each student.” Kayla’s Story The curiosity of a scientist and the careful work of a teacher have been part of Kayla for as long as she can remember. As the daughter of a music teacher, Kayla grew up appreciating the dedication of great teachers firsthand; through father-daughter stargazing, hiking, and mountain biking adventures, she also grew up with an appreciation for nature and […]
[…]how much I loved the act of teaching.” While it was always satisfying to see her jumpers complete a new trick, what she enjoyed most was “how contagious the energy and passion I had for jump rope seemed to be.” Madison feels the same energy and passion for mathematics and enjoys sharing that excitement with her students. Madison started her teaching career by returning to her alma mater, Long Reach High School in Columbia, Maryland, after earning a bachelor’s degree from the University of South Carolina, and a master’s degree and teaching certification from the University of Maryland. Before returning […]
[…]that in the past she probably would have let the inappropriate comment slide because she was not comfortable addressing it. Now she felt encouraged by what we were doing in Socius Club. Another positive outcome was when a colleague shared a concern about the lack of diversity on the senior thesis curriculum. He noted that nearly all of the authors—as well as the main characters—in the books our seniors read were male. This led to a discussion on opportunities to include more female voices in the curriculum and ultimately led us to switch out one of the books and replace […]
[…]and difficult to provide, as many of us are discovering throughout this endeavor. We have been comforted by glimpses of honesty from the classrooms of colleagues and peers who struggle with similar classroom and pedagogical difficulties. Yet, we also are finding that opening up our practice through this format challenges us in ways that extend beyond the logistic difficulties of remembering our daily posts. We struggle some days to represent our work positively—after all, even for the most engaging of instructors, not all teaching and learning is gloriously successful, novel, or exciting. What if I’m not doing something “cool” today […]
[…]it separates those people who perceive they “can do math” from those who believe they “can’t.” Activist Bob Moses of the Algebra Project takes it a step further calling fluency in algebra “the gatekeeper for citizenship” (Moses and Cobb, 2001, p. 14). Six years ago, my colleague and I were brainstorming a way to support students to develop this kind of fluency. We had the idea to stretch out the traditional x-y table so there was one column for each step between x and y. These would eventually be called story tables because they helped students see the story of […]
[…]Institute of Technology (MIT). During her first year there, Kate worked as a teaching assistant. “Working with students was extremely rewarding and was what I enjoyed most.” Kate left MIT to work as a substitute teacher in the Boston Public School System and as head coach for the Boston Latin School Science Olympiad team. “I discovered that high school students were a lot of fun.” Kate completed her master’s degree in education through the Boston Teacher Residency and UMass-Boston and began teaching full time at Boston Latin School in 2007. Kate has presented the results of her teacher research at […]
