MAIT 402 Blog Post #1

MAIT 402 Blog Post #1

Describe how outside-school experience(s) have expanded or deepened your subject area content knowledge, and tell how it enhanced or changed your understanding. Include at least one specific experience

I have had many outside classroom experiences that have expanded and depended my subject area content knowledge. Two experiences at the Catalina Island Marine Institute shaped me as a science student as a science educator. I went to CIMI as a 7th grader. On this 5 day trip I snorkeled (day and night), kayaked and hiked around Catalina Island. During this trip I was encouraged to take an apply what I had learned in my Life Science class to my experiences on the island. Knowing how different organisms of the kelp forrest interacted or different adaptations of souther california plants showed me the relevance of Biology to the real world. This experience also enabled to make deeper and stronger connections to the subject area and its inner workings.

Due my experience on Catalina Island, upon graduating from college, I applied to work as an instructor at CIMI. Become a teacher at CIMI allowed me to explore teaching science in the best possible setting. I was able to experiment with different pedagogical ideas and try them out. I was also able to see the profound effect that hands on science learning and inquiry has on the subject matter knowledge, retention and mastery for students. I am really grateful for my experiences at CIMI and what they did for my scientific and teaching career.

Respond to the class discussion of Ball’s “The Subject Matter Preparation of Teachers.” Have your initial judgments or opinions change based on the discussion?

Quote: “Philosophical arguments as well as common sense support the conviction that teachers’ own subject matter knowledge influences their efforts to help students learn subject matter. Conant (1963) wrote that “if a teacher is largely ignorant or uniformed they can do much harm.””

Response to quote: I do not like the CSET. I do not think it tests wether or not a teacher is ready to teach their content. I know people who have never taken classical science classes at the university level but who have passed various of the science CSETs. The CSET does not test thought process behind the scientific method and experimentation, an integral part of teaching science. I would not be a good English teacher because I was not trained to know the intricacies of the language. English teachers have their own process and methods to writing, a process I do not know. But what if I took and passed the English CSET, am I really ready to teach English? Absolutely not.

I also do not think our method of subject matter competency is good. Different institutions have different levels of rigor. I feel like my science education at Lafayette was excellent, far better than at other institutions, but not as good as the best Biology program in the country at the University of Chicago. While I went through intensive lab training, my sister (a graduate of Chicago) was in graduate level labs as a freshman,with electron microscopes looking at how cytotoxins break down the cell membranes of animal cells. How can our two educations compare? There is no perfect way to assess if a teacher is ready, but I do feel we need to up our standards. What is wrong with treating teaching like a skilled trade or like being a doctor? We would go through intensive training, mentorships, apprenticeships and rigorous content assessment for many years. Unfortunately, I feel that at this time, this will not happen. Our system is spread thin, with no money and exponentially increasing school age population. In order to treat teaching like being a Medical Doctor or a Machinist, we need money, something we have very little of. Until then, I just hope we can find a better way to train teachers.

• - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 

Quote: “A central premise of this paper is that teachers’ understandings are shaped significantly through their experiences both in and outside of school and that a major portion of teachers’ subject matter learning occurs prior to college.”

We all associate expertise with how much you know. Today if I were to take a test and ace it, I would be expert with that content. But could I teach it? I have always thought that if you able to teach the material correctly, then you are an expert. I would love to think of a way to develop public education curriculum so that students are assessed on how well they teach the material. This would mean that when our students leave high school or university, they would have the foundation to become good teachers and experts in their field.

Where are you in developing and pursuing a line of inquiry?  What is your question?  Are you satisfied with your question?  At this point, what do you know about the research available in this area?  What ideas do you have for possible experiential learning sources?

I am almost done with my question. My research project is going to focus on resiliency in the classroom. I want to create a curriculum to implement in my advisory that helps improve my students’ academic resiliency. I plan on measuring this with academic improvement, video observation of behaviors in the classroom as well as through surveys. So far I have found a lot of articles. My biggest challenge is not a lack of information but instead there is too much information. I am going to need to work hard to narrow down the resources to what I can realistically use in my classroom. I have found many different type of curriculums. I have found scholarly articles that have analyzed the effectiveness of that curriculum. I have also started to read two different books on the effects of trauma on brain chemistry and how it can be treated in the classroom.

Feel free to add artwork, photographs, quotations, or personal experiences that connect to your content area. Express yourself.