Science for the Ages
As a child, I spent much of my free time performing complex surgical procedures on my stuffed animals as I prepared myself for becoming a veterinarian. Unfortunately, my veterinarian dreams were crushed when I realized that veterinarians cannot always heal animals. Upon this realization, I focused my dreams on becoming a marine biologist after visiting the Caribbean and building multiple fish tanks; I would still get to study and interact with some of my favorite species of animals, but would not be directly responsible for saving their lives. I entered into Michigan State University as an undergraduate with my eyes focused on this dream career. Once again, my dreams were crushed when I realized I did not want to move away from my family, friends, and my beloved Michigan. After a bit of self-reflection, not to mention two semesters of using up all of my “fun” credits on advanced math, I looked back at my life and asked myself, “What can I do with the rest of my life that will embrace my love for science, but in a practical way?” It dawned on me at that point that I could actually continue and share my love for science by teaching it to others. I had over 250 hours of community service volunteering at an elementary school and at the time, currently worked for a Latchkey/Summer Camp. Therefore, I had a plethora of experience and interest in the education realm. Becoming a science teacher would tie my passions with my experience.
Fast forward four years to my completion of over 70 credits in the sciences and science education. I was in my student teaching internship successfully using my knowledge of science and science education to teach 3rd graders about rocks, minerals, landforms, energy, etc. in a hands-on and engaging way for the students. They were working in cooperative learning groups to perform investigations that helped them solidify the concepts I had taught them and I was performing formative and summative assessments aligned to the Grade Level Content Expectations (GLCEs). I felt I was very well-prepared to take on my own classroom the following year, especially in the area of teaching science effectively. Unfortunately, due to a shortage or jobs in the metro-Detroit area and my husband developing an unforeseen sickness, I was unable to attain an elementary education job for two years. During the second year of this time, I taught science, technology, engineering, and math afterschool lessons with LEGOS for a company called Bricks 4 Kidz. My students loved learning about science and engineering by building and discovering. This job reinvigorated my desire to continue my education and learn further the best strategies for how to teach math and more specifically science. Therefore, I chose to enter into Michigan State University’s (MSU) Master of Arts in Education (MAED) program with a concentration in science and math.
Upon entering the MAED program, I unexpectedly acquired a late-hire 5th grade science and social studies teaching job. I quickly learned that unbeknownst to myself, during the two years while I was semi-removed from the education world, Michigan was in a science education reform. I learned specifically about what this reform encompassed in the first class I was enrolled in at MSU, which was TE 861B, Inquiry, Nature of Science, and Science Teaching. This class introduced me to the driving force behind the reform, which were a new set of standards being developed and adopted by states, the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). I specifically studied how the new standards encompassed eight science and engineering practices that were to replace the outdated and currently used scientific method. My thinking behind science drastically changed. Science was no longer to be taught as a linear process to be performed in a lab that ended once scientists reached their conclusions. Science was to be taught in cohort with engineering and show how scientists and engineers have specific practices they use to research questions, but that these practices could be performed in any order and as many times as needed to acquire information regarding a question. I say to acquire information because science should be viewed as not ending when a scientist reaches a conclusion. These standards were no longer a list of concepts that students would have to know by the end of grade levels, but rather were considered performance expectations that showed how students would develop skills and content knowledge across multiple years of education and science disciplines. This class not only made me aware of the science education reform that I was entering into, but also made me realize that this reform would directly impact the strategies I had learned and developed in undergraduate regarding how to teach science; I needed to adapt my science teaching practices to better meet the new NGSS. I was given the chance to briefly try and test out my new knowledge of the NGSS by developing a lesson aligned to a meeting the science practice and content portions of the specific NGSS content expectation of developing models to explain the changing of the seasons and moon phases. This class introduced me to the NGSS reform and showed me that it was now my responsibility to further learn the NGSS reform and learn new instructional strategies for how to teach science to meet them.
To continue my education regarding how to adapt my science instruction to meet the NGSS science reform, I enrolled in the class, TE 861A, Teaching Science for Understanding. This class expanded on what I learned in TE 861B. I had a working knowledge of why the NGSS were developed, how they were organized according to the eight science and engineering practices, crosscutting concepts across disciplines, and patterns, and how to align lessons to them. I now needed to learn what teaching strategies to use to help my students to accomplish these new standards. TE 861B did this for me. Its aptly named title, Teaching Science for Understanding, describes precisely what it focused on, how to teach science to allow students to truly understand how to do science and not just what science is. I learned that the best type of instruction to meet the NGSS is inquiry-based. Inquiry-based instruction involves the teacher taking on a slightly different role in the classroom. They act as more of a guide or a facilitator tasked with providing students with experiences that will allow them to progressively develop understandings of science concepts. Teachers are to never directly teach any concept to students, but rather they should help students prove their misconceptions wrong and develop new understandings by engaging them in various activities aimed increasing the students’ amount of experiences with the concept. This class completely changed my thinking regarding how students should go about learning science. I realized engaging, hands-on instruction was no longer enough to meet the NGSS. I had to change my instruction to become more inquiry-based. Luckily, TE 861B equipped me with a multitude of specific inquiry-based instructional strategies. These strategies stray away from engaging the students in any kind of rote-learning of facts and instead focus on them discovering. One powerful inquiry-based instructional strategy that I learned from this class and now use when introducing new concepts is the Prediction, Observation, and Explanation demonstration (POE). The POE allows teachers to easily identify misconceptions when students make predictions regarding a certain phenomenon. It then provides students an initial experience with the phenomenon when they get to observe a demonstration. Finally, the students briefly begin either proving their misconceptions incorrect or further developing their knowledge when they attempt to explain what they observed. This class directly affected my practice by preparing me with strategies for how to teach inquiry-based lessons to better meet the NGSS and showed me that I needed to start implementing these strategies into my lessons.
My tool box for teaching inquiry-based science to better meet the NGSS was getting fuller; however, it still majorly lacked one important tool… I needed a tool that addressed how to make my new inquiry-based instruction more appealing, relatable, and meaningful to students by taking into account what they are interested in and exposed to in their daily lives. When I thought about what my students were interested in, technology immediately popped into my head. Each of my students possibly possesses more technology and is more knowledgeable about it than I am. Not only that, but when I am able to check out the computer lab or use the Chromebooks, my students are ecstatic. Therefore, I wanted to learn how to incorporate technology or what I would soon learn is more appropriately called new media, into my lessons. To accomplish this, I enrolled myself in the class, TE 816, Technology, Teaching, and Learning Across the Curriculum. This class opened my eyes to a plethora of possibilities for how to use new media strategically and meaningfully and not just use it to say I used it. I learned about the idea of cognitive load or how much of the working memory a person is using to perform certain tasks. I figured out how to integrate new media into my lessons to enhance my students’ interest and learning without increasing my students’ cognitive load to a point where it would hinder them. This idea had me rethinking how I used technology in the classroom. At that time, I was just incorporating new media to accomplish tasks that my students had to do anyways, but I was not enhancing their learning and quite possibly I was actually imposing too much cognitive load on them. Instead, I was intentionally choosing different new medias based on the ratio of cognitive load imposed upon my students to how much the new media would aide them in developing an understanding of the concept at hand. This class affected my practice by actually guided me in developing a completely new media-based lesson on gravity and the solar system. I carefully created a website that walked my students through a lesson using the new medias of Popplet, a Screencast video, Create A Graph, a gravity interactive, and Google Forms. The result was my students being engaged and easily relating to the new media while still following an inquiry-based format. This class gave me the tools necessary to engage and relate to my students during inquiry-based lessons and will affect how I plan and teach my lessons.
My journey from learning how to teach science one way in my undergraduate to learning how to teach science almost an entirely different way due to a science reform in my Master’s program made me realize the importance of teachers continuing their education. I would have been completely lost in my current job in regards to what the NGSS are and how to adapt my instruction to better meet the NGSS had I not been enrolled in the MAED program. I now approach my job with a new goal in addition to my main goal of delivering a deliberate and effective science and math education for all of my students. I now not only want to continue my education past my Master’s, but I also want to be involved and responsible for educating other science teachers. In my experience, a teacher already has what feels like an infinite list of responsibilities wearing on them, making it extremely easy to get stuck in a rut when it comes to adapting their curriculum to compliment new reforms and students’ ever-changing technological lives. I want to continue to learn myself and then teach these teachers the latest and greatest in science education by either becoming a curriculum coach for my current district or even possibly by attaining my PHD in science education and then becoming a professor of science education. I had no interest in being anything but an elementary teacher prior to enrolling myself in the MAED program. The program gave me a profound interest in research related to science education, which then expanded into a desire to share my research and knowledge with others.
The Master of Arts in Education program at Michigan State University presented me with the opportunity to take classes that would impact the way I think about science education and how I approach my current job as a science and math teacher. I am unsure of where my career would be headed had I not enrolled in this program. Would I be content teaching science and math to elementary students as is or would I be striving to further my education to better meet the needs of my students and my district? I would like to think that I would be doing the latter, but I honestly cannot say that would be the case. This program and the classes I took affected how I teach and pushed me to want to further my education, my colleagues’ knowledge, and possibly future teachers' education.
