I am a science teacher.
These three big ideas—metacognition, formative assessment, and technology—comprise my multidimensional academic focus. The path that I am carving out for myself requires that I do several things.
I earned this title this past May when I completed my licensure requirements and earned a master's degree in Curriculum and Instruction in Secondary Science Education.
This is my fourth career and, at 45 years old, the first one I have been wholeheartedly excited about. Before becoming a "real" teacher, I was a private tutor for many years. This job let me set my own hours and work as much or as little as I wanted to, which was crucial as I cared for my and my family's health over the last 10 years. Once those health problems were resolved, I was ready to get back out there!
When my body and brain were so broken, I felt like I could not trust myself to complete anything rigorous. However, all the time, energy, and money that went into my science, medical, and public health education—which had been seemingly wasted—is being used in this job! It turns out I love being in the classroom and working with students!
When I initially applied to my graduate program, I had big dreams of revamping science curricula and improving access to materials through technology. Those dreams are still there, but they have matured a bit. My capstone project involved integrating more formative assessments and asking students to think metacognitively about how they learn and what kind of students they are. I fell in (academic) love with these concepts.
For my graduate course on assessment writing in science and math, I did a literature review on the research around writing better multiple-choice questions in science education so that teachers and students could identify misconceptions and depth of understanding. Given the national teacher shortages, bigger class sizes, and more rigorous science standards, appropriate technology use will allow teachers to provide timely feedback on common misconceptions.
These three big ideas—metacognition, formative assessment, and technology—comprise my multidimensional academic focus. The path that I am carving out for myself requires that I do several things.
1. Learn more about metacognition and child psychology - I intend to return to my local community college this spring to start my psychology education.
2. Learn more about formative assessment techniques - I am reading loads of literature from educators and researchers about this topic.
3. Learn more about technological tools that could streamline the teacher-student feedback cycle - I need to stay on top of AI research in education and seek out all the tech tools teachers have designed for formative assessment.
I plan to use this blog to analyze my insights, plan my journey, and engage with other educators who are interested in similar topics (let's get together and design some tools!!). Ultimately, I want to return to graduate school for my doctorate and become a classroom consultant specializing in formative assessment and metacognition.
All this is to say that I finally feel like I am where I am supposed to be.
Topics I hope to discuss in future posts:
1. Why metacognition?
2. Different kinds of multiple-choice questions and their merits and drawbacks.
3. How to integrate more formative assessment into my classroom time.
4. What kind of research projects I could do for my doctorate.
What else should I read/write/talk about?
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