Lisa Z

Last night we had our celebration for the culmination of the Get Real! Science program. After subbing at SOTA, I headed home to pick up my outfit that my Mom bought special for me for interviewing season and I headed to U of R. While roaming around and viewing my peer’s student work and table sets my dad and grandpa walked in. My dad didn’t inform me that he was coming until that morning, and I was extremely excited to see him and my pop.

It was so surreal to have my family in my professional space. I enjoyed it. My grandpa enjoyed talking with everyone about what they are teaching and doing. He came to me at the end and was so excited that he got to chat with Jodi and learn about how his poop is made.

Overall I think it was a great night and it was awesome to have my family there to meet my peers, professors and April. I felt immense amounts of love and support throughout the room and we are all so lucky to have each other. To the new cohort, I only wish for you to have as much success as we have throughout the program. Remember, “It will be good for you”, because it really will.

For me, its back to job hunting… finishing up this semester’s course work and my thesis. Oh, right, my thesis! I really need to get on that one!

Over Spring Break I lost myself in relaxation at home with my family and traveled to New York City with my friend Kaleigh for the weekend. I used this vacation as a way to forget about everything that I had going on in Rochester, finishing up classes, working, interviewing and job hunting, etc. I made sure that everything I needed to have done was done before I left, and only used my computer for leisure. Wow, doesn’t sound much like me, huh? While enjoying New York City with my friends, walking around Manhattan, eating rice pudding from my favorite place (Rice to Riches on Spring St. in Soho), and snacking on sushi and sake for hours while catching up… I still kept one thing in mind: could I ever live here? The answer is a sure, no.

Don’t get me wrong; I thoroughly enjoyed my stay with my friends for the weekend. Chatting with Kelsey about her new job as an Art Director for a film production company and visiting Jackie’s research lab at Hunter made me nostalgic yet proud of the successful young women we have all become.

As much as I would love to be closer in proximity to my dear friends from college, I am not the NYC type. Everyone there is in such a hurry, running around with their headphones on, worried about themselves and no care in the world for others. Not my cup of tea.

I even had a culture shock when I came to Rochester, almost a year ago (so hard to imagine it’s been a year already!) when people would walk by me on the streets and not say hello or at least smile. Coming from a small town and a very small college, I was used to be friendly to everyone I came across. Yet, Rochester has grown on me and I can’t imagine having to leave anytime soon. I have established amazing friendships that I am not ready to move away from, involved myself in the community with my research and teaching, and fallen in love with my small studio apartment that is in the heart of my favorite part of the city. My cooperating teacher told me the other day while at dinner that I have turned into a city girl. I agree, I have changed; I do like living in a city, but Rochester city, not New York City.

So I guess in reflection to Cailin’s post the other week, you can have ties to people, but also ties to where you are. Even when I think about moving back home to teach, I am not so sure about it. I have established a life for myself in Rochester and I like it. Do I miss my family, oh yeah. Just look at how much fun they can be…

But, I think it is important think about the environment that you will be living in as well when job hunting. I know there are plenty of job opportunities in NYC for teaching, but I know now, for sure, that I would not be happy living there. Bottom line, Lisa’s new rule of thumb: visit a place, like really visit and explore it, before you commit to a job there. As teachers our jobs are 24/7, yet you want to make sure that you still like your drive to work everyday, the grocery store you’ll go to, and the community of people you will be working with.

This past Wednesday, Danielle and I presented at Rochester’s STEM academy school for Career Expo day. The director of the science department has requested Dr. Zany Zeller, the crazy scientist to come and present to the students about dispelling stereotypes in science. She had met me earlier in the year during a Research in RCSD Presentation that I had presented at for my research with science STARS.

When we arrived to the school, I immediately felt like a Super Star with everyone knowing my ‘stage’ name and asking around about me. After the first group of students, each remaining group ran into the classroom buzzing from all of the talk about our presentation in the halls. We started out by introducing ourselves to the students and what we do, why we are here, etc. We explained to them that our presentation was all about them, not us and possible careers in science, but about them as scientists. The first activity asked the students to draw themselves. After sharing our drawings (some of which were amazingly talented artists), we drew what we thought scientists looked like. That was when the students were introduced to Dr. Zany Zeller, the crazy and mad scientists; the typical stereotype of a scientists. I was dressed in a dirty and flame marked lab coat, bright red lipstick slopped all over my lips and teeth, a bright blonde curly and out of control wig, and goggles. Crazy? Maybe. Successful in getting the students attention? Oh yeah!

“So you may have drawn something similar to what I look like. Big hair, a lab coat and something blowing up. This is a common stereotype of scientists because of cartoons and TV shows, but today, you are going to learn that scientists don’t look like this. They look like, you!”

We headed to the back of the room to engage in some science inquiry with the famous “Boo Bubbles”, bubble solution and dry ice. (Directions here) Every student in all four groups that we saw that day were buzzing with excitement and curiosity. Not only did they all walk away with new or confirmed knowledge of phase changes and surface tension, but they walked away with a strengthen identity in science.

After engaging with the bubble demo, questioning, talking, and playing, we left the students with this: “Make sure to take your drawings with you and remember that the drawing of yourself, that is the scientist! You are all scientists! You just showed us, and yourselves back there with the demo. You were asking questions, using scientific terminology, being curious and conversing with each other about what was happening. You were scientists!”

In reflection, it blows me away, the opportunities that I have had here at Warner and in Rochester. I felt so accomplished when I left the school that day, and I am sure that Danielle would agree. We were both glowing, because they were glowing. If only I had my crazy doctor friends with Danielle and me as well…

After our interviews tonight in class, I went to Race, Class, Gender and discussed feminism with my peers. This video was shown…

With my research and engagement in STARS, this is what I stand for… empowerment for women. This woman, in the 1850s told her story, to empower other women to tell their stories.

As social justice educators, aren’t we here to empower others? To support every child that comes into our classroom and tell them that they can do anything they put their mind to, that they can succeed in today’s society, that they can become an active agent of change, just like I. Ain’t I a woman? Set out on this journey called life, to empower other women to learn and engage with science, to engage with, well, life.

In the beginning of 1st period today, the most amazing thing happened. A student, TM, who recently has been very upset and not engaged with class, asked if she could share her weekend with the class. Being the first positive interaction in class in the past week, I hastily honored the request. TM stood in the front of the room, explaining that she had went to church all day on Sunday and then walked downtown to the Liberty pole to support Trayvon Martin, the young black student in Florida who was killed by a neighborhood watchman who reported that he felt threatened. A link to an article in the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle is below for more information…

Trayvon Martin

Even though TM’s sharing of her weekend sparked interest from all of the other students to share their weekend, and took almost the first ten minutes of class, it was worth it in my eyes (and I am sure that Danielle would agree). This sharing was clearly important for TM and I thought it was extremely important to take the teachable moment and discuss this issue with the students. I honored and thanked TM for sharing and engaged the students in a further discussion about the importance of supporting others in these hard times.

I think it is imperative for teachers to take the time to recognize these teachable moments and embrace them. Today we did not finish the lesson as planned, so what? We have tomorrow to continue. With >50% of my students in this class being classified as minority students, how could we not talk about this national issue.

Cheering you all on to dare to take these teachable moments!

As I have mentioned before, Danielle and I are having our students blog about their experiences as Paleontologists and their learning about evolution and the geological history of the Earth. It is going really well and I would love love love it if you all commented on our students’ blogs instead of ours!! Below please find the links to each class and comment away! I will give you candyyyyyy

http://kidblog.org/Period1-Science7H/

www.kidblog.org/period3-science7H

www.kidblog.org/period4-science8/

www.kidblog.org/period7-science7H

www.kidblog.org/period9-science8

Period 7 in particular has really taken up the blogging community in the classroom. Some students have created their own authentic blog posts outside of class in order to debate with their friends about important issues in science. Grace has blogged about vegetarianism and Dylan and Matthew are in a heated discussion about global warming. Really cool stuff is happening in our classroom and I couldn’t be more proud of our students!

Reflective practioner, I think so. This week Danielle and I have continued the implementation of our unit. We have been amazing reflective practioners, instantly realizing when students need something different, when they need more. All of our students have thoroughly enjoyed the excavations, but what are they getting out of it? Other than some awesome experiences and opportunities to develop and strengthen their science identities, they haven’t learned much content. So, in the midst of the chaos, we reflected and changed what was needed. We have decided to add an entire week to our unit, allowing students two days to make connections to the digs instead of one. Now, for the remaining two geological Eras, students will dig for one day, reflect, learn about the Era and then make connections one day and on the last day, continue to make connections and answer prompted questions in order to create authentic blog posts.

So with interviews and job applications in the near future, I’ve got plenty to say when asked, “How are you a reflective practioner?”

Anywho, here are some pictures of the fun we’ve had this week!!!

As many of you know, Danielle and I are co-teaching an innovative unit on Evolution. This past week my dear friend Katy found this super cool website that has science articles for kids. The coolest part, teachers can download them as PDF files and delete paragraphs before printing… you could do a lot with this!

Anyway, the interest article for me was this: “One Big Animal Family”

http://www.sciencenewsforkids.org/2011/12/one-big-animal-family/

The main point of the article was,
“By combining genetic information and data from fossil studies, the scientists were able to connect genetic changes to specific time periods. The team found that ancient animals were evolving long before their new forms were preserved as fossils during the Cambrian explosion” (Ornes, 2011, p. 1).

This article got me to thinking about the summative assessment that we are creating for our students. Throughout the unit students have and will continue to blog about their experiences and their learning about evolution and geological time. As a summative assessment we are going to have students create a final blog post of the unit, guided questions will be provided to steer students to reflecting about their entire learning experiences throughout this unit. I was chatting with our CT, and we thought, hey what a better question that something like this:

What do you think would happen if paleontologists uncovered fossil remains from the Cambrian explosion that closely resembled mammal-like species with an amniotic egg? In your response be sure to:
1. Include important vocabulary terms: evolution, natural selection, stratification, extinction, adaptation, etc.
2. Discuss what the process would have been for a paleontologist that uncovered this (summarize your experiences as paleontologists from uncovering fossils to sharing your information with the public).
3. Discuss what you think would happen to the scientific community and the body of knowledge that we call natural science. Do you think people would believe this paleontologist? What would he/she have to do to gain acceptance of his/her findings?

This is just a rough draft, but we really want to include all of the elements that we have formatively assessed throughout the unit– content learning about evolution and geological time periods, and their experiences as scientists (identity and inquiry process skills).

Please comment by stating how you would answer this question. Would you be engaged by it? Interested? Any feedback would be great, thanks!

Hi All! So this week Danielle and I start our unit! We taught the students how to blog last week and they are super excited about it all. Yet, they really want other people to comment on their blogs. So please please please, in the hours of free time that you have, read and comment on some of my students’ blogs — trying to build that science community! =D

http://kidblog.org/Period4-Science8/author/lzeller/

Hi All!

If you are missing your science STARS from the fall, some of them are still attending Spring STARS and you can check them out here:

http://getrealscience.com/STARS/

This past week the girls learned how to create stop-motion animation clips to include in their final documentaries. They will create models explaining the science behind their investigations: “BPA–how does it affect the body?” and “Texting while Driving– Why is it so bad?”

Also, a reminder– PLEASE ATTEND THEIR FINAL DOCUMENTARY FILM NIGHT AT THE CINEMA APRIL 26TH, 6:00-8:00PM!