About Me

My name is Matthew Keyes and I was born and raised in New Jersey. I moved to California in 1998 to be with my wife. I worked as an Electrician for 6 years before returning to school part time at MESA College. While attending MESA College, I discovered my passion for Chemistry and Geology. A few years later I attended SDSU and earned my Bachelor's degree in Geochemistry. I am currently in the Teaching Credential Program at CSU San Marcos, aspiring to teach high school Chemistry and Earth Science.
 While attending SDSU, I was fortunate to work on a research project (senior thesis) that involved measuring Uranium-234 isotopes within fresh volcanic glasses from Loihi Seamount, the youngest Hawaiian Island. My undergraduate advisor (Dr. Aaron Pietruszka) and I attended the 2009 American Geophysical Union Conference in San Francisco where I presented a poster about our research. I am an avid surfer and love being outdoors.
As a surfer, I became very savvy with weather forecasting and meteorology. I want to start a Science Olympiad club at a school to get students excited about science.



Science Olympiad

            I had the opportunity to coach a student (privately) from a local school district in the “Rocks and Minerals” portion of the 2012 Regional Science Olympiad held at Del Norte High School, Poway.  The competition included many identification stations where students had to ID specific rocks and minerals, and answer a few questions about each sample.
            I was impressed with the depth of knowledge expected of the high school level students from the rocks and minerals portion of the event. The practice exams were college 100-level exams in my opinion, but then again Geology is not taught at the high school level, so it could also be considered a theoretical AP Geology class.
            The Science Olympiad website gave me resources to help coach her accurately. There are study guides and practice tests to guide your instruction. After coaching a few times, you can sign up to judge or assist in the competition. This is something I would like to bring with me to my first job as a science teacher. The events span all the science areas at the high school level.

Topics covered at the “Rocks and Minerals” Station:
Mineralogy
·            Naming and identification of mineral samples
·            Chemical compositions and classifications
·            Crystal systems
·            Moh’s Hardness scale (1-10)
·            Bowens Reaction Series (Igneous Petrology)
·            Mineral Habits, textures and color(s)
·            Reaction with HCl (carbonate rocks)
·            Economic ore minerals
·            Specific Gravity measurements
Rock classification and rock names:
·            Formation of igneous rocks, Magma types, magma differentiation
·            Associated tectonic boundaries with igneous/metamorphic rocks
·            Sedimentary rocks: depositional environments
·            Metamorphic rock grades and associated minerals
·            Volcanic rock classification
·            Rock textures and mineralogy
·            Natural resources, ores, economic uses of minerals 

            Students had 90 minutes to complete the event. The Rocks and Minerals event was held in a closed classroom where only the students could enter. Coaches were not allowed to see the testing room. There were 12 tables set up with 2 or 3 rock and mineral samples per table, and students had to answer a series of questions about each specimen.
            Students were allowed to bring one, 3-ring binder with any notes they can fit into it. My student worked very hard on her binder and it was organized and practical, which helped her score well. We organized all of the rocks and minerals in Microsoft Excel and created a spreadsheet organized by specific mineral properties, which she printed and put into her binder. We also created a PowerPoint that included multiple photos of each rock and mineral, printed it, and put that in the binder as well. 
            Students worked in teams of one or two, and Student 1 had a friend who teamed up with her.
            Student 1 scored very well at Regional’s, 3rd place out of 60 teams! She advanced into the State competition where she scored 5th place overall. After discussing the feedback form her state-level competition, we determined the tests were all made regionally, and depending on how active a region is with geology, the test could range in hardness. Student 1 claimed that the local, regional test in Poway was much more difficult than the State test, held in Long Beach, CA. I know that San Diego has strong Geology programs in education and that probability played a role in developing the Science Olympiad test.
            While there, I got to see another competition called “Towers”, where students build towers out of balsa wood and hung buckets of sand from them to measure how much weight it could withstand. Student 1 did very well in this event. She built a tower that held all of the sand without breaking. The event was scored by dividing the weight of sand held by the total weight of the tower. She scored 2nd place in Regional and advanced to state in this event as well.
            The overall feeling I got from this event was fun and passion. I witnessed students putting their heart and soul into their devices and still have fun if they don’t win. All the students were having a great time and the competition between local schools was alive and well. I loved the application of the content this program allows students to perform. Science Olympiad is an inquiry-based learning event and students are very engaged in scientific application.


Educational Philosophy

            I believe everyone can learn. I also believe in progress, not perfection. I value perseverance because we need to struggle in order to grow. My intentions as a teacher is to not only to teach content passionately, but for my students to critically think for themselves.
            My educational philosophy is a combination of essentialism and constructivism. In chemistry, there is core information that needs to be taught in order to progress and apply these concepts to real world applications. As an essentialist, I believe that my job is to give students the basic conceptual understandings of physical science. As a constructivist, I want students to construct their own understandings of the concepts. For example, when studying gas laws (the behavior of gasses), I need to show students how to use the gas law formulas. Once they have mastered how to use them, I want them to apply them to a real life application. Some students will apply them to weather, some to carbonated beverages, and some will mentally apply them to technology. This is where my students’ prior knowledge comes into play. If I can access their prior knowledge, them we can relate the content to previously observed phenomena, and hopefully create an “a-ha” moment where the student makes a strong connection to the material.

Teaching Models: I believe in both Inquiry Science and Inductive Thinking to deliver the most authentic learning experience. This is largely because I teach chemistry, and these teaching models are very common throughout the science with the use of laboratory experiments and demonstrations. For the inductive thinking model, I want to create lessons, projects, or assessments that have open-ended outcomes. I don’t want my students to just get the lab done, but to have an opportunity to design their own experiment. In methods we talked about Inductive and Deductive models of learning. Most labs completed in Chemistry are deductive, where students simply follow the procedures, step by step. An Inductive approach, for example, would be posing a problem, and letting the students design the experiment to solve it.
            For example, an idea I have for an inductive lab would be to give the students a tennis ball-sized sample of a local sandstone and explain to them that it’s made up of silica (quartz) grains and Calcite (CaCO3). I want to know what %(by mass) of the sample is calcite and what percent is sand (quartz). I will also ask them to make another measurement of some kind to the rock that they feel is important (like separating dark grains from light grains with a magnet, doing a grain size analyses on the stone with sieves...). This will also promote higher order thinking, which is what I am really after when teaching students to problem solve. 

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