My Favorite Highlights of the 2013-2014 School Year

Hello, dear readers! I apologize for being an awful blogger; obviously I have not yet mastered the balance of work, home and posts! I do hope you are well, and thanks for sticking around! Can you believe that it’s mid-June already? Most of my teacher-friends are already out of school! In fact, my own kid is out this week, but here I am, with still approximately seven (torturous–oops, did I type that out loud?) days left on our extended school year calendar.  What’s that sound? Ah, it’s me hissing in envy as I imagine my peers frolicking on the beach, while I sit in a hot second-story classroom, trying to teach.

To take my mind off those lovely beach scenes, I am posting my favorite highlights of the school year. If this post was a scrapbook, it would have glittery stickers with “super star” and  “awesome” all over it.  Don’t get me wrong; this year definitely posed a lot of challenges, but I believe I experienced more highs than lows. A lot of my professional growth this year centered on my decision to put my fears aside and just do something different. I did exactly that, and boy, was it a lot of fun!

My Top 7 Favorite Highlights of the Year:

1. Acquiring classroom pets through PetCo grants. (Watch out for Max’s stinky poops!)

Here’s Max, our bearded dragon, who helped us learn about the major characteristics of organisms throughout the year. 

2. Setting up more (free) field trips throughout the year. (Thanks, Field Trip Factory!)

Students performed a Pet Store scavenger hunt, where they learned about different animals, their habitats, and adaptations.

3. Helping my students make real-life connections with science instruction, application, and careers in science through multiple guest-speaker visits and field trips to local colleges. (Thanks to our service women at Stratton Air National Guard Base!)

Female Air Force pilots shared their experiences transporting NSF scientists to Antarctica with our students during Career Fair Day.

A doctorate student from The College of NanoScience and Engineering talks about her research on biomedical engineering, and debunks female scientist stereotypes. “Science is sexy!”

4. Setting up and supervising a year-long all-girls after school STEM mentoring program. (Go #STEMGirls!)

One of the students got to experience how to put on appropriate work gear before entering a Clean Fab room in the research facilities at The College of Nano Science and Engineering.

My rad #STEMgirls and I posed in our lab coats, and checked out each other’s DNA extractions.

5. Focusing more on hands-on activities and engineering design practices to help students learn science concepts. (It doesn’t hurt to indulge in our sweet tooth once in awhile!)

 

 

Using candy manipulatives to build DNA structures and practice base pairing.

Using timed challenges to build structures with limited materials to encourage problem-solving and collaboration between students.

6. Incorporating more long-term collaborative problem-based unit projects in my instruction (The following photos show students in various stages of research, design, and presentation during our month-long Code Blue Human Body Systems Unit. Many thanks to the pediatricians from The Children’s Hospital, Albany Medical Center, for listening to and assessing our Grand Rounds presentations!)

Students worked in specialty groups to teach each other about their specific human body systems.

Students worked in “home base” groups, where they designed their medical clinic signs and earned their licenses after taking board exams.

One group’s 3D model of their chosen human body system.

Doctors listened in as students presented their mystery patient’s diagnosis and treatments during Grand Rounds.

 

7. Attending the NSTA Boston Conference as a conference speaker, and getting to talk about  the uses of social media in the science classroom with some awesome kick-butt people!

 

Hello, Boston!

“The Social Science Teacher” presenters!