Looking Back...
For the past three years, I attended an informational meeting in the middle of January for a STEM-centered fellowship. The incentives were enticing, but it was the presenters and current fellows that engaged me each year. The teacher leaders brought excitement and enthusiasm about the program, but were also very particular about the mindset that they wanted the fellows to possess. Some of the current fellows spoke of a life-changing experience and one that completely adjusted their view of science and math education. One teacher shared that he was about to leave the profession until this fellowship completely altered his view of his role in education. How was this possible in a professional development that lasted less than one year? I could tell that this program was different and I spent a lot of time studying the application questions in order to gain a better understanding of what they might be looking for in a fellow and how to bring myself closer to that point before I actually applied.
I was unable to apply for the fellowship for the first two years since a requirement was to be teaching in CPS for a specified number of years. I now appreciate this prerequisite, as I can see that I did not have all the pieces needed to make the most out of this fellowship in my first few years of teaching. It was as if I needed to be convinced of the fact that presenting students with facts and asking them to regurgitate them on a test did not lead to a deeper understanding of the material.
My first year was dominated by PowerPoint presentations, which successfully bored both my students and me throughout most of the year. I earned my masters in my third year and took a step in the right direction by making my class slightly more inquiry-based, where students were given highly structured activities to guide them through the material. Yet the department as a whole continued to complain about students not being able to make connections from physics to chemistry and chemistry to biology, and being completely stumped when they had to connect classroom content to a real world application.
If the changes I made in my first three years counted as one step up on the ladder of highly effective teaching, the fellowship with MSU (which has only just begun) counts as at least four steps! From day one, as illustrated in my day to day reflections, I was beginning to realize the potential of the tools and technology around me. We were shown a few fairly simple apps and programs and given four to five immediate uses for them in our classroom. Shortly after that, we were all beginning to see and share pieces of technology that we were familiar with and throwing out several ideas for implementation in the classroom. The idea of repurposing was established.
By the third day of our face-to-face meetings, I was beginning to let go of a worry that has held me back from making large changes in the way I teach, which is quickly becoming an outdated and ineffective method:
“I still feel that I am staring down a massive overhaul of the curriculum. I’m worried that I won’t be preparing the sophomores for success in AP Chemistry. After thinking last night, however, I realized that losing something somewhere means a gain elsewhere. The students may lose some content, but they will step into these AP courses as better thinkers, better DOERS of science. They will know how to obtain information, how to determine its relevance, and if it is trustworthy. The memorization needs to be removed.”
-Day 3 Reflection
The end of the first week of the two week session brought in a few more thoughts and ideas; at this point I felt that there were almost too many things that I wanted to implement right away! The idea of prior knowledge and misconceptions was introduced the day after we worked with Second City on our improv skills. Although this was a fun and welcome break to work we had been doing, I was not seeing a meaningful connection for it in my classroom. One of my group members, however, helped me make the connection. Students bring in various experiences and what they believe to be sound explanations for these experiences. When they begin to realize that some of these explanations are not fully correct or are completely wrong, they may either keep these new, correct explanations separate from their experiences and/or not feel comfortable mentioning them in class in front of their peers. “If alternative views of scientific principles are not addressed, they can coexist with "what the teacher told us" and create a mishmash of fact and fiction” (Watson & Kopnicek, 1990). By beginning the year with a few improv sessions, we can quickly break down that barrier and encourage an open learning environment where there are no “dumb” questions and misconceptions are brought out into the open to be resolved.
After the midpoint of the face-to-face session, the focus began to shift toward our individual classrooms. This is where this experience really separated itself from any other professional development that I have done before. We thought of a big idea that we wanted to focus in on for the year and wrote it out on a sticky note. Then we wrote it again later that day. Then we wrote it again the next morning, and the next afternoon again. At first I was not seeing why we needed to write the same idea so many times, but I quickly realized that what I wrote each time was not the same. It was evolving and beginning to get to the heart of the problem that I was trying to solve in my classroom. Over the past few weeks we have now been asked to write out more detail for each part of our plan. And then we have to write it again. And again! And each time I write, I reflect back on my old writings and adjust them as I gain more insights on the entire picture. Normally, I would be satisfied with the initial plan and spend a few school years trying it out and troubleshooting as I went, which is much more inefficient than truly diving in and wrapping my mind around the whole plan the first time.
Looking Forward…
As described by the fellows before me that presented at the informational meetings in January, my view of science education and the role I play is quickly changing. The World of Wonder assignment clearly captures this change in my frame of mind. As suggested by Henriksen and Mishra, teachers should begin to look at the world that surrounds them and their students and try to determine how they can make the connection to science (2013). With a little practice, this becomes very easy! Everything can be traced back to science, and more specifically, chemistry, which describes the pieces that make up every single thing that surrounds us and is within us.
On a macroscopic level, however, we can also see the connections of chemistry to other disciplines and start to recognize its importance. This simple assignment is one that I plan to bring to my own classroom to give my students a chance to change their frame of mind as well. I could tell students these things every day but this will not bring about a true understanding. “If understanding a topic means building up performances of understanding around that topic, then the mainstay of learning for understanding must be actual engagement in those performances” (Perkins & Blythe, 1994).
This idea of understanding is one that I am continually coming back to when thinking about my big idea for this year. There are two pieces to it that hit home which include breaking down misconceptions that can act as barriers to understanding and getting students to actually transfer knowledge from one application to another. One of our readings began by describing what I see perfectly: “Teachers can be astonished to learn that...students do not grasp fundamental ideas covered in class. Even some of the best students give the right answers but are only using correctly memorized words. When questioned more closely, these students reveal their failure to understand fully the underlying concepts” (Committee on Undergraduate, 1997). This is primarily because students bring in their preconceived framework of knowledge and it can be difficult to break that down and rebuild it correctly. Simply telling students the correct explanations will not automatically convince them to fit it into their current knowledge base since there is already a perfectly good explanation there! As explained by Heath and Heath, “one important implication of the “gap theory” is that we need to open gaps before we close them. Our tendency is to tell students the facts. First, though, they must realize they need them” (2010).
The other main component that I will be bringing back to my classroom is the transfer of knowledge to demonstrate true understanding. Once misconceptions are brought out into the open and questioned, we can begin to re-form a new foundation. According to the readings, this appears to be a three step process. First, we must anchor this new information in something that students already know (Heath & Heath, 2010). Next, we must allow them to practice transferring this knowledge to a novel situation. In the past, I have required this step only at the assessment phase, and students struggled. I now see that you cannot expect students to perform well on a novel problem if they never had practice with other novel problems! “With deliberate and explicit instruction in how to transfer (and assessments that constantly demand such transfer), the learner must take what were initially bits of knowledge with no clear structure...and come to see them as part of a...more meaningful, more useful system” (Wiggins & McTighe, 2005).
My understanding of the readings and our experience together becomes clearer every day that I continue to work on my curriculum. I am starting to view every activity, discussion, and chemistry concept in a new way and am trying to determine how I can connect it to something tangible for my students. The sharing of ideas is critical, for professionals and for students, and there is no excuse for not bringing this lifelong skill into our classrooms considering the world we live in today. Within our disciplines, it is ultimately our job to equip our students with the skills needed to “meet the present and the future in informed ways” (Mansilla & Gardner, 2008).
References
Committee on Undergraduate Science Education (1997).Misconceptions as barriers to understanding science. National Academies Press.
Heath, C., & Heath, D. (2010). Teaching that Sticks. 1-11.
Henriksen, D., Mishra, P. (2013). Learning from creative teachers. Educational Leadership, 70(5).
Mansilla, V.B., & Gardner, H. (2008). Disciplining the mind. Educational Leadership. 65(5), 14-19.
Perkins, D., Blythe, T. (1994). Putting understanding up front. Educational Leadership, 51(5), 4-7.
Watson, B. & Kopnicek, R. (1990). Teaching for conceptual change: Confronting children’s experience. Phi Delta Kappan, p. 680 – 684.
Wiggins, G., & McTighe, J. Understanding understanding. In Understanding by Design, expanded 2nd Edition, ASCD
For the past three years, I attended an informational meeting in the middle of January for a STEM-centered fellowship. The incentives were enticing, but it was the presenters and current fellows that engaged me each year. The teacher leaders brought excitement and enthusiasm about the program, but were also very particular about the mindset that they wanted the fellows to possess. Some of the current fellows spoke of a life-changing experience and one that completely adjusted their view of science and math education. One teacher shared that he was about to leave the profession until this fellowship completely altered his view of his role in education. How was this possible in a professional development that lasted less than one year? I could tell that this program was different and I spent a lot of time studying the application questions in order to gain a better understanding of what they might be looking for in a fellow and how to bring myself closer to that point before I actually applied.
I was unable to apply for the fellowship for the first two years since a requirement was to be teaching in CPS for a specified number of years. I now appreciate this prerequisite, as I can see that I did not have all the pieces needed to make the most out of this fellowship in my first few years of teaching. It was as if I needed to be convinced of the fact that presenting students with facts and asking them to regurgitate them on a test did not lead to a deeper understanding of the material.
My first year was dominated by PowerPoint presentations, which successfully bored both my students and me throughout most of the year. I earned my masters in my third year and took a step in the right direction by making my class slightly more inquiry-based, where students were given highly structured activities to guide them through the material. Yet the department as a whole continued to complain about students not being able to make connections from physics to chemistry and chemistry to biology, and being completely stumped when they had to connect classroom content to a real world application.
If the changes I made in my first three years counted as one step up on the ladder of highly effective teaching, the fellowship with MSU (which has only just begun) counts as at least four steps! From day one, as illustrated in my day to day reflections, I was beginning to realize the potential of the tools and technology around me. We were shown a few fairly simple apps and programs and given four to five immediate uses for them in our classroom. Shortly after that, we were all beginning to see and share pieces of technology that we were familiar with and throwing out several ideas for implementation in the classroom. The idea of repurposing was established.
By the third day of our face-to-face meetings, I was beginning to let go of a worry that has held me back from making large changes in the way I teach, which is quickly becoming an outdated and ineffective method:
“I still feel that I am staring down a massive overhaul of the curriculum. I’m worried that I won’t be preparing the sophomores for success in AP Chemistry. After thinking last night, however, I realized that losing something somewhere means a gain elsewhere. The students may lose some content, but they will step into these AP courses as better thinkers, better DOERS of science. They will know how to obtain information, how to determine its relevance, and if it is trustworthy. The memorization needs to be removed.”
-Day 3 Reflection
The end of the first week of the two week session brought in a few more thoughts and ideas; at this point I felt that there were almost too many things that I wanted to implement right away! The idea of prior knowledge and misconceptions was introduced the day after we worked with Second City on our improv skills. Although this was a fun and welcome break to work we had been doing, I was not seeing a meaningful connection for it in my classroom. One of my group members, however, helped me make the connection. Students bring in various experiences and what they believe to be sound explanations for these experiences. When they begin to realize that some of these explanations are not fully correct or are completely wrong, they may either keep these new, correct explanations separate from their experiences and/or not feel comfortable mentioning them in class in front of their peers. “If alternative views of scientific principles are not addressed, they can coexist with "what the teacher told us" and create a mishmash of fact and fiction” (Watson & Kopnicek, 1990). By beginning the year with a few improv sessions, we can quickly break down that barrier and encourage an open learning environment where there are no “dumb” questions and misconceptions are brought out into the open to be resolved.
After the midpoint of the face-to-face session, the focus began to shift toward our individual classrooms. This is where this experience really separated itself from any other professional development that I have done before. We thought of a big idea that we wanted to focus in on for the year and wrote it out on a sticky note. Then we wrote it again later that day. Then we wrote it again the next morning, and the next afternoon again. At first I was not seeing why we needed to write the same idea so many times, but I quickly realized that what I wrote each time was not the same. It was evolving and beginning to get to the heart of the problem that I was trying to solve in my classroom. Over the past few weeks we have now been asked to write out more detail for each part of our plan. And then we have to write it again. And again! And each time I write, I reflect back on my old writings and adjust them as I gain more insights on the entire picture. Normally, I would be satisfied with the initial plan and spend a few school years trying it out and troubleshooting as I went, which is much more inefficient than truly diving in and wrapping my mind around the whole plan the first time.
Looking Forward…
As described by the fellows before me that presented at the informational meetings in January, my view of science education and the role I play is quickly changing. The World of Wonder assignment clearly captures this change in my frame of mind. As suggested by Henriksen and Mishra, teachers should begin to look at the world that surrounds them and their students and try to determine how they can make the connection to science (2013). With a little practice, this becomes very easy! Everything can be traced back to science, and more specifically, chemistry, which describes the pieces that make up every single thing that surrounds us and is within us.
On a macroscopic level, however, we can also see the connections of chemistry to other disciplines and start to recognize its importance. This simple assignment is one that I plan to bring to my own classroom to give my students a chance to change their frame of mind as well. I could tell students these things every day but this will not bring about a true understanding. “If understanding a topic means building up performances of understanding around that topic, then the mainstay of learning for understanding must be actual engagement in those performances” (Perkins & Blythe, 1994).
This idea of understanding is one that I am continually coming back to when thinking about my big idea for this year. There are two pieces to it that hit home which include breaking down misconceptions that can act as barriers to understanding and getting students to actually transfer knowledge from one application to another. One of our readings began by describing what I see perfectly: “Teachers can be astonished to learn that...students do not grasp fundamental ideas covered in class. Even some of the best students give the right answers but are only using correctly memorized words. When questioned more closely, these students reveal their failure to understand fully the underlying concepts” (Committee on Undergraduate, 1997). This is primarily because students bring in their preconceived framework of knowledge and it can be difficult to break that down and rebuild it correctly. Simply telling students the correct explanations will not automatically convince them to fit it into their current knowledge base since there is already a perfectly good explanation there! As explained by Heath and Heath, “one important implication of the “gap theory” is that we need to open gaps before we close them. Our tendency is to tell students the facts. First, though, they must realize they need them” (2010).
The other main component that I will be bringing back to my classroom is the transfer of knowledge to demonstrate true understanding. Once misconceptions are brought out into the open and questioned, we can begin to re-form a new foundation. According to the readings, this appears to be a three step process. First, we must anchor this new information in something that students already know (Heath & Heath, 2010). Next, we must allow them to practice transferring this knowledge to a novel situation. In the past, I have required this step only at the assessment phase, and students struggled. I now see that you cannot expect students to perform well on a novel problem if they never had practice with other novel problems! “With deliberate and explicit instruction in how to transfer (and assessments that constantly demand such transfer), the learner must take what were initially bits of knowledge with no clear structure...and come to see them as part of a...more meaningful, more useful system” (Wiggins & McTighe, 2005).
My understanding of the readings and our experience together becomes clearer every day that I continue to work on my curriculum. I am starting to view every activity, discussion, and chemistry concept in a new way and am trying to determine how I can connect it to something tangible for my students. The sharing of ideas is critical, for professionals and for students, and there is no excuse for not bringing this lifelong skill into our classrooms considering the world we live in today. Within our disciplines, it is ultimately our job to equip our students with the skills needed to “meet the present and the future in informed ways” (Mansilla & Gardner, 2008).
References
Committee on Undergraduate Science Education (1997).Misconceptions as barriers to understanding science. National Academies Press.
Heath, C., & Heath, D. (2010). Teaching that Sticks. 1-11.
Henriksen, D., Mishra, P. (2013). Learning from creative teachers. Educational Leadership, 70(5).
Mansilla, V.B., & Gardner, H. (2008). Disciplining the mind. Educational Leadership. 65(5), 14-19.
Perkins, D., Blythe, T. (1994). Putting understanding up front. Educational Leadership, 51(5), 4-7.
Watson, B. & Kopnicek, R. (1990). Teaching for conceptual change: Confronting children’s experience. Phi Delta Kappan, p. 680 – 684.
Wiggins, G., & McTighe, J. Understanding understanding. In Understanding by Design, expanded 2nd Edition, ASCD