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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