“As an instructor in the program I continually re-evaluate my role and responsibilities. I notice a dramatic gap between the goals I set for myself, and my actual ability to inspire and motivate students. Now, when I reflect my role in the classroom, I see myself as a coach at best, and mostly a babysitter, a common enemy, a nag, a caricature, erratic, neurotic, idealistic, and desperately under-prepared. I am an imposter, a young observer of the world walking stiffly in a newly purchased teacher wardrobe that I cannot wait to shed, with nothing in my bookbag but persisting hope and the best of intentions.”
When you leave with your four-year degree and head into the classroom, you are inspired to change minds. You are ready to take on your own classroom with a textbook answer for every problem and every situation that you think could possibly arise. But when you start teaching, all of that changes. Teaching can be a lot harder to do when it is time to walk the walk. Textbook answers are not always the right answers anymore. You are put into situations where you have to make a decision and sometimes it can be really had to choose what you think would be the best situation. In the Book entitled, What Should I Do?, a teacher was put into a situation where a student brought a knife to school as safety because the student feared that when he walked home some students would going to attack him. This teacher struggled with whether or not to give the knife back to the student after school. This is a tough situation. The fact that a student thinks that the best solution to a safety issue is bringing a knife to school. This makes me question, how can we teach our students to think in a way that will help them to be better problem solvers? How can we teach our students to be inspired to think more creatively? How do we help them to think of different solutions? This is where STEM can help. My theme is numbers through nature. Looking at something so simple and beautiful and looking deeper into what makes it so simple and beautiful. I plan on showing how this same thing can be applied to a situation. I want to show my students how they can be a “STEM THINKER.” I want them to see that they can take a situation or a problem and be creative in the way that they solve this problem. There is always a way to make a good choice that can help make a problem turn into something beautiful.
When you leave with your four-year degree and head into the classroom, you are inspired to change minds. You are ready to take on your own classroom with a textbook answer for every problem and every situation that you think could possibly arise. But when you start teaching, all of that changes. Teaching can be a lot harder to do when it is time to walk the walk. Textbook answers are not always the right answers anymore. You are put into situations where you have to make a decision and sometimes it can be really had to choose what you think would be the best situation. In the Book entitled, What Should I Do?, a teacher was put into a situation where a student brought a knife to school as safety because the student feared that when he walked home some students would going to attack him. This teacher struggled with whether or not to give the knife back to the student after school. This is a tough situation. The fact that a student thinks that the best solution to a safety issue is bringing a knife to school. This makes me question, how can we teach our students to think in a way that will help them to be better problem solvers? How can we teach our students to be inspired to think more creatively? How do we help them to think of different solutions? This is where STEM can help. My theme is numbers through nature. Looking at something so simple and beautiful and looking deeper into what makes it so simple and beautiful. I plan on showing how this same thing can be applied to a situation. I want to show my students how they can be a “STEM THINKER.” I want them to see that they can take a situation or a problem and be creative in the way that they solve this problem. There is always a way to make a good choice that can help make a problem turn into something beautiful.