When I first heard about, and applied for the Kenan Fellowship, I honestly didn\u2019t know what to expect in terms of classroom impact.\u00a0 For starters, I didn\u2019t really think I had any business applying to begin with\u2014I\u2019m not a science teacher.\u00a0 However, since becoming a fellow, I\u2019ve made huge changes in my practice, especially when it comes to collaborating with my peers.<\/p>\n
Though this is my 10th<\/sup> year teaching, it is only my second year teaching in North Carolina.\u00a0 Re-establishing my professional network has been hard, but this fellowship and the practices I\u2019m learning from it are helping.\u00a0 My fellowship is focused on \u201cSparking Student Curiosity,\u201d especially in the environment.\u00a0 As a result, I\u2019ve reached out to and teamed up with science, horticulture, and outdoor-ed teachers in my building and district.\u00a0 With these contacts, I\u2019ve been able to develop and present resources to other educators through my district that encourage them to get kids outside.\u00a0 This has led to an invitation to join our district\u2019s Hub Farm Curriculum committee, a group working across grade level and content areas to develop materials and opportunities that utilize the school district\u2019s urban farm and outdoor spaces.\u00a0 Finally, and most recently, I\u2019ve been asked to present professional development on science literacy, with a science teacher from my building.<\/p>\n This past year, my instruction has changed as well.\u00a0 I am stepping outside of my comfort zone, and incorporating more scientific research and resources, as well as non-fiction texts.\u00a0 Additionally, I am working towards developing practices that show students how what they are doing in class will and does directly link to what they can do in the future.\u00a0 We do a lot more career exploration than I\u2019ve done in the past, and as a result of my externship at the EPA, I\u2019ve grown much more comfortable incorporating professions in STEM fields.\u00a0 With all of this in mind, there is a lot more I want to do.\u00a0 Ideally, I would be able to develop an environmental literature course that counts as an English credit at my school.\u00a0 I also would love to work toward co-teaching a course with a science teacher for a dual English and Science credit.\u00a0 Being a part of this fellowship experience is showing me how much is possible in my practice, and I\u2019m so excited (but let\u2019s be real, nervous sometimes too) to be pushing myself further into sparking student curiosity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When I first heard about, and applied for the Kenan Fellowship, I honestly didn\u2019t know what to expect in terms of classroom impact.\u00a0 For starters, I didn\u2019t really think I had any business applying to begin with\u2014I\u2019m not a science teacher.\u00a0 However, since becoming a fellow, I\u2019ve made huge changes in my practice, especially when it comes to collaborating with… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":549,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-45","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/old.kenanfellows.org\/2019-eericson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/old.kenanfellows.org\/2019-eericson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/old.kenanfellows.org\/2019-eericson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/old.kenanfellows.org\/2019-eericson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/549"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/old.kenanfellows.org\/2019-eericson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/old.kenanfellows.org\/2019-eericson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46,"href":"https:\/\/old.kenanfellows.org\/2019-eericson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45\/revisions\/46"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/old.kenanfellows.org\/2019-eericson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/old.kenanfellows.org\/2019-eericson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/old.kenanfellows.org\/2019-eericson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}