One of my favorite parts of teaching is seeing the young people I work with \u201cconnect the dots\u201d between what we study in the classroom and life outside of school.\u00a0 These \u201cah-ha\u201d moments, I find, have less and less to do with the world of academia, and more to do with real-world experiences, and life-long learning journeys.\u00a0 The biggest memory of this \u201cfeel good\u201d moment from this past year came during my sophomore 2 honors English class.<\/p>\n
The focus of this course is World Literature\u2014and we read novels, graphic novels, and memoirs written by authors from war-torn and conflict ridden countries.\u00a0 To make connections between content and STEM explorations, I\u2019ve designed resources that aid and encourage students to investigate the environmental impacts of war and conflict.\u00a0 As we were reading Persepolis, <\/em>\u00a0I had students watch news segments and interviews about and with people in the Middle East, Syria specifically, today.\u00a0 Though situation are not at all the same, students were able to make geographical connections, and \u201csee\u201d people as more than characters I a novel.\u00a0 With this, we studied the refugee crisis, and watched a short documentary about refugee camps.<\/p>\n During this film, a students asked, \u201cbut what about bathrooms?\u201d It was in this moment an entire class of 15 and 16 year olds popped their heads up, mouths a gape, and said \u201coh yeah.\u201d From here on, I was addressing and re-directing a barrage of questions like, \u201cwhat about water?\u201d \u201cWhat about cooking?\u201d \u201cAre they worried about smoke?\u201d \u201cWhere does the garbage go?\u201d In this moment, I realized I was truly sparking student curiosity.\u00a0 These young people began to study and explore what happens in these areas and to the landscape during times of war and conflict.\u00a0 Additionally, they realized what they are privileged to experience on a day to day basis (indoor plumbing, stoves, garbage collection) isn\u2019t a given for most people.\u00a0 This kid of insight will serve them well as they continue their academic careers, and for understanding the \u201cbig picture\u201d of the world in which they live.<\/p>\n I would\u2019ve been hard pressed to get my classes thinking on a global scale like this without my work with the fellowship.\u00a0 I redesigned a lot of my classroom content and curriculum after my externship at the EPA.\u00a0 I incorporated more inquiry projects that encouraged students to explore their natural environments, and I know that this is what directly contributed to these young people asking real-life questions.\u00a0 Furthermore, my time with the fellowship has provided the resources to point my students into more scientific fields or research and data collection resources.\u00a0 I am more confident in my ability to share future STEM related careers with young people in my classroom.\u00a0 Plus, I\u2019m more comfortable reaching out to and collaborating with science teacher at my school, and asking specific questions to help grow student learning.\u00a0 I am so grateful for my experience with the fellowship and my time the EPA, so that I can facilitate student learning in ways that I\u2019ve not been able to before\u2026connecting more dots than ever before.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" One of my favorite parts of teaching is seeing the young people I work with \u201cconnect the dots\u201d between what we study in the classroom and life outside of school.\u00a0 These \u201cah-ha\u201d moments, I find, have less and less to do with the world of academia, and more to do with real-world experiences, and life-long learning journeys.\u00a0 The biggest memory… 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-48","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/old.kenanfellows.org\/2019-eericson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48","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=48"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/old.kenanfellows.org\/2019-eericson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49,"href":"https:\/\/old.kenanfellows.org\/2019-eericson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48\/revisions\/49"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/old.kenanfellows.org\/2019-eericson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/old.kenanfellows.org\/2019-eericson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/old.kenanfellows.org\/2019-eericson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}