Big Idea
The key idea of my ImagineIT project is to create a space where female students at Prosser Career Academy can learn and discover a love for STEM. Often times there is not enough time in my math curriculum to simply allow students to “play” with the math and I would like for this group to be a place for students to do so. My plan is to involved teachers from all curricula in this group and utilize the fact that Prosser is a vocational school to help create my space. My goal is for this group to serve two main purposes for the female students at Prosser. The first goal is to allow students to get comfortable with the process of exploring and creating. This process will involve both successes and failures and I hope to celebrate both with the same enthusiasm. Many students see failure as being a reflection of themselves, but I want students to see that we can learn just as much from our failures as we can from our successes.
The second goal is to introduce female students to a plethora of STEM related careers. Our students are often not exposed to the different careers they can have that involve their love of science and math. This introduction will allow them to see that there are many different ways that they can have a STEM related career and show them the path to take in order to get there. Often times our students do not get a chance to sit down and talk to a women that is in a career they are interested in and I hope to give students a variety of different career path ideas that they had never thought possible.
Prosser Career Academy is the perfect place to begin a group like this. While we do not have a set makerspace to use to explore, we do have nine different vocational shops that I am hoping to utilize. The most important part of this group to me is to make sure that it is more student lead. I want to allow the students to explore ideas and concepts that they are interested in without imposing my own interests on this group. This will be a place where female students are allowed to explore what they love and hopefully find out how to turn this love into a career they are passionate about.
Performances of Understanding
One of the ways that I will be looking for understanding in this after school group will be through monthly check ins with students. These check ins will occur in different ways so that students are able to learn how to express themselves through different technologies. I plan on starting with having the students simply start a Google doc through their CPS emails that will serve as a way to keep track of what we do throughout the year. The first entry on this Google doc will be a summary of what the students know about STEM at this point and what types of careers they believe to be typically STEM careers. My goal is to enhance their knowledge of STEM throughout the school year.
This will be a group that is evolving as it goes so I want to make sure that I am documenting each step that we take as a group. The failures in the group will be as important as the failures as they will teach me what to change for the upcoming year. My goal is to focus on four different “projects” throughout the year. I want to break these down by quarters so that students that may not be as interested in one aspect of the group will have something to look forward to during the next nine weeks. Students will take a survey that outlines their knowledge of a project before we begin and then will present their project to a different group of students at the end to gauge their growth in understanding of the concepts. Prosser is lucky to have three different middle schools within walking distance and my hope is that we are able to form relationships with these schools and present our creations to small groups of students after school to not only show off what we have created but also get other groups of girls interested in coming to Prosser in order to be part of our STEM group.
Throughout the year I want to keep a running journal of our journey as a group. I am planning on either creating a Facebook page for the group or possibly being more ambitious and beginning our own website. I am currently leaning more towards a Facebook page in the first year with this project because I believe it will not be as time consuming allowing me to focus more on what direction I would like this group to go. Throughout the school year I plan on having students create videos documenting what they have accomplished thus far.
As a culminating event I plan on having the students present to our incoming class of freshmen at one of the summer events. Through this presentation I will be able to evaluate what the students have learned throughout the year and will get a better idea of their take away from this group through what they share with other students.
Context
My job at Prosser Career Academy is two fold. I have been teaching mathematics at Prosser for the past ten years. In this ten years I have taught freshmen - juniors. For the past five years I have taught mainly freshmen students as well as being one of the Freshmen On Track Coordinators. This has allowed me the opportunity to connect with many of the students in each grade level not only through my math class, but through helping them to become successful high school students. The students at Prosser come from all over the city. There are two main curricular tracks students are able to take at Prosser. Approximately sixty students per class are International Baccalaureate Diploma candidates and take all academic classes throughout their four years. The other approximately three hundred students are CTE students that will take a vocational class for five periods throughout their high school career. I hope to work with the CTE teachers in order to utilize the technology available in their classrooms to encourage the creating aspect of my group.
Content
I want students to be able to use their creativity in order to create. This creation could be something that solves a problem, simplifies their lives or is simply something they are interested in. This group will be one that needs to foster acceptance of others and their ideas. The most difficult part of implementing this group will be encouraging students to make mistakes but also to make these mistakes public so that others are able to learn from them. Students usually have the mindset that if they get the wrong outcome then they made a mistake somewhere and must go back to fix this. Making mistakes has become something that students have become ashamed of but they should be thought of as a learning experience. The most difficult part of this group will be getting students to interact with their learning and using it to create. Most of our classes have become less about interacting with the material and more about conveying information to students. Getting students into a mindset where there is no right or wrong answer or straight forward process to arrive at an answer will be the most difficult part of implementing this group. When students get stuck on a problem they always turn to the teacher in order to set them on the right path, but with this group there will not always be a way for me to help them get “unstuck” and they will have to learn to work together as a team in order to figure out the answers to their problems.
Pedagogy
There are a number of different pedagogical approaches that I plan to take when implementing this group of learners. The most important approach is going to be turning the student into the teachers. I want students to take leadership of this group and to take on the role of observer of learning. There are many TED talks that discuss becoming a Maker and that all people are Makers. To begin the group these are the types of videos that I will show the students so they can get an idea of what will hopefully be happening in our year together. This group will work mostly on independent student projects. My goal is for the group to agree on two or three different projects that we can work on for the entire school year. I plan on a project each quarter and having groups work independently for the first half of the quarter and then coming together as a large group in order to create a large group project utilizing each groups work in the final outcome.
Technology
The technology that I hope to utilize is what Prosser already has available through their different vocational shops. Prosser has a few different mobile computer carts that we could utilize as well. Through our vocational shops we have materials and tools that I hope to be able to work with the shop classes in order to find a way to incorporate these tools into our group as well. I will also be utilizing resources that are recycled from other groups to get the group running. I plan on tapping into other groups already formed to create projects in conjunction with them so we are able to share materials this way as well. My department was recently gifted with ten Chromebooks through Donors Choose that I will be able to utilize as well.
The Total PACKage
This group will be formed as organically as possible so I see the technology that we utilize being technology that we create ourselves. Since this will be a student led group I do not foresee myself forcing ideas on them but instead I see them learning through creating. My role will be one of mentor where I can integrate curriculum as needed, but the group will be more student led with the curriculum coming in behind what the students want to get out of the group. Through utilizing different teachers in this group I also hope to allow students to see that content does not work individually outside the walls of school, but that we are always integrating each of the content areas together. This plan will allow for students to utilize their areas of strength in school, but also to work on improving on their areas where they do not see themselves as being strong students.
The key idea of my ImagineIT project is to create a space where female students at Prosser Career Academy can learn and discover a love for STEM. Often times there is not enough time in my math curriculum to simply allow students to “play” with the math and I would like for this group to be a place for students to do so. My plan is to involved teachers from all curricula in this group and utilize the fact that Prosser is a vocational school to help create my space. My goal is for this group to serve two main purposes for the female students at Prosser. The first goal is to allow students to get comfortable with the process of exploring and creating. This process will involve both successes and failures and I hope to celebrate both with the same enthusiasm. Many students see failure as being a reflection of themselves, but I want students to see that we can learn just as much from our failures as we can from our successes.
The second goal is to introduce female students to a plethora of STEM related careers. Our students are often not exposed to the different careers they can have that involve their love of science and math. This introduction will allow them to see that there are many different ways that they can have a STEM related career and show them the path to take in order to get there. Often times our students do not get a chance to sit down and talk to a women that is in a career they are interested in and I hope to give students a variety of different career path ideas that they had never thought possible.
Prosser Career Academy is the perfect place to begin a group like this. While we do not have a set makerspace to use to explore, we do have nine different vocational shops that I am hoping to utilize. The most important part of this group to me is to make sure that it is more student lead. I want to allow the students to explore ideas and concepts that they are interested in without imposing my own interests on this group. This will be a place where female students are allowed to explore what they love and hopefully find out how to turn this love into a career they are passionate about.
Performances of Understanding
One of the ways that I will be looking for understanding in this after school group will be through monthly check ins with students. These check ins will occur in different ways so that students are able to learn how to express themselves through different technologies. I plan on starting with having the students simply start a Google doc through their CPS emails that will serve as a way to keep track of what we do throughout the year. The first entry on this Google doc will be a summary of what the students know about STEM at this point and what types of careers they believe to be typically STEM careers. My goal is to enhance their knowledge of STEM throughout the school year.
This will be a group that is evolving as it goes so I want to make sure that I am documenting each step that we take as a group. The failures in the group will be as important as the failures as they will teach me what to change for the upcoming year. My goal is to focus on four different “projects” throughout the year. I want to break these down by quarters so that students that may not be as interested in one aspect of the group will have something to look forward to during the next nine weeks. Students will take a survey that outlines their knowledge of a project before we begin and then will present their project to a different group of students at the end to gauge their growth in understanding of the concepts. Prosser is lucky to have three different middle schools within walking distance and my hope is that we are able to form relationships with these schools and present our creations to small groups of students after school to not only show off what we have created but also get other groups of girls interested in coming to Prosser in order to be part of our STEM group.
Throughout the year I want to keep a running journal of our journey as a group. I am planning on either creating a Facebook page for the group or possibly being more ambitious and beginning our own website. I am currently leaning more towards a Facebook page in the first year with this project because I believe it will not be as time consuming allowing me to focus more on what direction I would like this group to go. Throughout the school year I plan on having students create videos documenting what they have accomplished thus far.
As a culminating event I plan on having the students present to our incoming class of freshmen at one of the summer events. Through this presentation I will be able to evaluate what the students have learned throughout the year and will get a better idea of their take away from this group through what they share with other students.
Context
My job at Prosser Career Academy is two fold. I have been teaching mathematics at Prosser for the past ten years. In this ten years I have taught freshmen - juniors. For the past five years I have taught mainly freshmen students as well as being one of the Freshmen On Track Coordinators. This has allowed me the opportunity to connect with many of the students in each grade level not only through my math class, but through helping them to become successful high school students. The students at Prosser come from all over the city. There are two main curricular tracks students are able to take at Prosser. Approximately sixty students per class are International Baccalaureate Diploma candidates and take all academic classes throughout their four years. The other approximately three hundred students are CTE students that will take a vocational class for five periods throughout their high school career. I hope to work with the CTE teachers in order to utilize the technology available in their classrooms to encourage the creating aspect of my group.
Content
I want students to be able to use their creativity in order to create. This creation could be something that solves a problem, simplifies their lives or is simply something they are interested in. This group will be one that needs to foster acceptance of others and their ideas. The most difficult part of implementing this group will be encouraging students to make mistakes but also to make these mistakes public so that others are able to learn from them. Students usually have the mindset that if they get the wrong outcome then they made a mistake somewhere and must go back to fix this. Making mistakes has become something that students have become ashamed of but they should be thought of as a learning experience. The most difficult part of this group will be getting students to interact with their learning and using it to create. Most of our classes have become less about interacting with the material and more about conveying information to students. Getting students into a mindset where there is no right or wrong answer or straight forward process to arrive at an answer will be the most difficult part of implementing this group. When students get stuck on a problem they always turn to the teacher in order to set them on the right path, but with this group there will not always be a way for me to help them get “unstuck” and they will have to learn to work together as a team in order to figure out the answers to their problems.
Pedagogy
There are a number of different pedagogical approaches that I plan to take when implementing this group of learners. The most important approach is going to be turning the student into the teachers. I want students to take leadership of this group and to take on the role of observer of learning. There are many TED talks that discuss becoming a Maker and that all people are Makers. To begin the group these are the types of videos that I will show the students so they can get an idea of what will hopefully be happening in our year together. This group will work mostly on independent student projects. My goal is for the group to agree on two or three different projects that we can work on for the entire school year. I plan on a project each quarter and having groups work independently for the first half of the quarter and then coming together as a large group in order to create a large group project utilizing each groups work in the final outcome.
Technology
The technology that I hope to utilize is what Prosser already has available through their different vocational shops. Prosser has a few different mobile computer carts that we could utilize as well. Through our vocational shops we have materials and tools that I hope to be able to work with the shop classes in order to find a way to incorporate these tools into our group as well. I will also be utilizing resources that are recycled from other groups to get the group running. I plan on tapping into other groups already formed to create projects in conjunction with them so we are able to share materials this way as well. My department was recently gifted with ten Chromebooks through Donors Choose that I will be able to utilize as well.
The Total PACKage
This group will be formed as organically as possible so I see the technology that we utilize being technology that we create ourselves. Since this will be a student led group I do not foresee myself forcing ideas on them but instead I see them learning through creating. My role will be one of mentor where I can integrate curriculum as needed, but the group will be more student led with the curriculum coming in behind what the students want to get out of the group. Through utilizing different teachers in this group I also hope to allow students to see that content does not work individually outside the walls of school, but that we are always integrating each of the content areas together. This plan will allow for students to utilize their areas of strength in school, but also to work on improving on their areas where they do not see themselves as being strong students.