Jade Nord STEM Philosophy Statement Introduction:

December 17, 2012

I have decided to become a teacher and follow in the footsteps of my father and mother after many years of struggling to find a career that I could be fully involved in and passionate about. I have always enjoyed taking care of children and found them to be drawn to me. I now have two children of my own who the first of which is getting ready to enter Kindergarten next year. As I have raised them along with my wife I have realized just how important and vital it is to provide them with the proper atmosphere and culture for learning and growing as individuals. I have come to realize that my particular skill set and personality traits are a good fit for what is required to be a great teacher. Parents first and foremost have the most impact on the lives of their children, closely followed by the teachers who they have during their school careers. Teachers have a huge influence for good or bad on how a student matures and develops both academically and outside of school, preparing them for the rest of their lives. STEM is definitely an important part of the 21st century teaching and learning landscape of schools across the country. Using STEM as an overall approach to teaching is closer to real life than just working on a single subject out of a textbook. Each area of STEM is interconnected and related to one another. Using the STEM approach allows teachers to combine subjects and have them applied to real world situations where the student can be an active participant with a vested interest in the problem at hand, as well as the outcome. As a nation we need to be cultivating young minds that are highly skilled, critical, creative, and innovative in their thinking so that we continue to prosper. If we fail to implement STEM education in our schools there will be a shortage of graduates looking for work in the engineering

and science disciplines. We as the United States of America need to strive for continual improvement of our education system in order to compete with other nations in our ever shrinking world. STEM Education is more than just the presentation and dissemination of information and the cultivation of techniques. It is a process for teaching and learning that offers students opportunities to make sense of the world and take charge of their learning, rather than learning isolated bits and pieces of content. In the STEM environment there is less emphasis on activities that demonstrate science content and a greater focus on those activities that allow students to engage in real world problems and experiences through project-based experiential learning activities that lead to higher level thinking. Learning in a STEM environment compels students to understand issues, distill problems and comprehend processes that lead to innovative solutions. Students learn through experience where they talk and engage in discourse. They learn by shaping arguments and solving problems in the course of a continuous process of asking questions, experimenting, designing, creating and gathering compelling supporting evidence. (By Dr. Patricia Fioriello, http://drpfconsults.com/what-5-experts-say-about-stemeducation/) My STEM Experience: I have had some amazing experiences as a STEM learner while studying as a pre-service teacher at Winona State University-Rochester. My experiences as a learner of STEM education has come through working with students first hand at Riverside Elementary School in Rochester, Minnesota. I experienced two main modules that showed how STEM really works. One was a bubble-ology project that incorporated all the STEM disciplines into a weeklong lesson where it transformed the typical teacher-centered classroom by encouraging the students to be driven by problem-solving, discovery, exploratory learning, and required students to actively engage the situation in order to find a solution. I also was involved in measurement lesson that involved students learning about how to measure and

what a perimeter or area of an object is. Through these two lessons I learned that using a STEM centered approach to learning is critical in having our students learn the most they can about our world in a way that makes sense to them and will stay with them for a long time. They learn best while actively engaging and being involved in the process of learning, and not just listening to lectures or reading from a textbook. I was also able to participate in a Zebrafish externship at Mayo Clinic that offered training and insight into the cutting edge use of Zebrafish as a model organism to study and learn about various problems facing us today. Working with a group called InSciEd Out, we were able to experience how they are able to integrate the use of their resources at Mayo Clinic to prepare and implement modules that were being used in elementary classrooms around Rochester. One of the main goals of this program is to integrate the STEM philosophy of learning to help students understand what it really means to be a scientist in todays world. It puts the focus on what the children want to know and helps them discover ways to find the answer to their own important questions by guiding them through the scientific process all the while using STEM education to accomplish this. It is a great example of how bringing all the disciplines of STEM together really works in the real world to solve real life problems. Content Knowledge: Content knowledge is essential to being an effective STEM educator. I bring a broad range of content knowledge that I have accumulated over my 33 years of life and schooling. I have always had a love for learning new things, and finding how it fits into my life and worldview. I have one bachelors degree already in the area of business and am continually looking for opportunities to expand my knowledge of the world around me. Math and Science have been strong academic areas for me throughout my life, and I have a solid understanding of both Technology and Engineering as well. I have always excelled in school and continued to learn through genuine interest in discovering new insights

every day. I know I have the competence and the confidence that I will need to be an effective teacher of STEM. The coursework I am now currently enrolled in through Winona-Rochester has been reworked and refocused on the STEM discipline of teaching. It is an amazing program that already has other universities looking at it to see how they can implement the same type of program in their own curriculums. Pedagogical Knowledge: The pedagogical knowledge that I bring to STEM education is growing day by day as I learn more and more about the best, most effective ways to teach the STEM disciplines. I now understand how it is that I am able to present material to students in a way that will allow them to fully engage in the learning and not have me or the text be the focus. This allows my students the opportunity to build their own understanding and learn by experiencing it for themselves. The use of direct instruction and modeling can still be used, but should be used less in favor of more engaging ways of teaching to ensure the students are learning at a deeper level. This way they are able to construct a conceptual understanding and not just memorize facts or have a simple procedural understanding that has no foundation for them. I continue to learn about the different types of theories and ways that I can better foster a learning environment that is better suited for my students. I have recently learned about the different types of lesson planning, such as the Madeline Hunter style Model, the 5 Es, or using a getting ready, task, discourse outline (or launch, explore, summarize style). I have learned about how to construct effective content and language objectives for my lesson plans. I have learned about many types of assessment techniques to use as a teacher, both formative and summative. A key to helping students really learn and understand something, is not to rely heavily on reading a textbook and having worksheets or homework to do all the time. As their teacher I will provide them with learning

experiences that relate to their lives for them to learn from. I will use questioning for thinking and scaffolding everyday to help guide them to reach their goals. Teachers Role: My role as a teacher, to support optimal learning, will be to guide the development of the classroom culture by creating a safe place for them both physically and academically to learn and grow without the fear of making mistakes or looking dumb. I need to stress and show by example of how I handle things that it is ok to make mistakes and try new things that challenge us. We may fail from time to time, but it is how we react that is important. I will work to foster a mastery response from my students and not allow them to fall into the helpless mindset that can be so damaging to a students learning career. A lot of these ideas I have formed by reading the work of Carol Dweck (Self-Theories: Their Role in Motivation, Personality, and Development). I will work to create learning goals for my students that encourage their growth and use performance goals only when needed. My role as a teacher will also be to build a connection with each student and get to know them personally and get them to the point that they feel comfortable communicating with me openly and honestly about anything in their life, not just academics. By knowing every student and assessing where they are academically I will be able to differentiate my instruction to provide the most relevant information. I will also design instruction that takes students in their zone of proximal development to that next level, stretching their learning on an ongoing basis. I will also strive to provide a balance of providing information while allowing my students to discover new learning on their own. I will also strive to give teaching prompts that will foster an effort-based mindset as well as have plenty of group work and whole class discussions about answers and the processes they are going through in order to help them construct a better understanding. Developmental Theories:

The developmental theories that support my philosophy are those formed by Jean Piaget and Lev Vygotsky. They worked to create a constructivist theory of development that humans generate knowledge and meaning through sequential development of an individuals cognitive abilities, (such as the mental processes of recognize, recall, analyze, reflect, apply, create, understand, and evaluate. Wikipedia.com) I also believe in the malleable theory of intelligence that Carol Dweck wrote about in her books stating that smart or dumb is not something we are, that we can learn and grow by working hard to construct new learning. This will be one of the main ways of encouraging my students who are having trouble understanding something. I will focus on the encouraging them, that they can do it and when it is hard, it means that you are learning something new. There are also theories that are similar in social constructivism that support my ideas of using group work and learning as a whole with other students that will foster a better understanding of the subject. Additional Preparation: To better prepare myself for this work I will continue to refine my skills and abilities to use questioning for thinking in my classroom every day. Getting used to finding the exact right question at the exact right time that will allow the student to find the solution for themselves and construct the conceptual understanding that they need, instead of leading the learner to the answer. I have also set SMART goals to help me reach a higher level of student engagement while leading whole group instruction. I will also continue to strengthen my ability to manage a classroom as a whole group using different techniques I will practice during my next semester of school and continuing into my student teaching opportunities. Another key element to continue to get better at is time management both personally and professionally, in order to get the most done in the time that I have and still maintain a

balanced healthy lifestyle. This will then lead to being better prepared for class and setting up lesson plans to more accurately show how and what I want to accomplish for each days learning. Conclusion: I believe that after my first semester of this elementary education degree I have learned more than I could have imagined before starting this new journey. I am committed and desire to learn the most I can in order to be the best, most prepared teacher I can be. Most all of us remember those teachers who really made a difference in us and changed our lives forever. I know teaching can be a tough profession to work in, but I have seen that the more effort I invest in my teaching abilities, the more students will take away from my instruction in the end. I am definitely gaining a great foundation for entering my teaching career that will help to guide me in daily decisions in the classroom. The clinical practice hours that I have been involved in at Riverside Central Elementary, Sunset Terrace Elementary as well as my time at Mayo Clinic in the Zebrafish externship have been extremely useful in gaining that real world perspective of teaching and being able to experience what teaching and learning looks like in action. It allows me the experience that usually was not afforded students until much later in their academic careers during their final student teaching assignments. I have been able to create different lesson plans in a variety of formats that has guided my understanding of how and when to use each style. I have learned about many different child development theories and how to apply them. From the beginning of this semester where I did not know what STEM stood for, to now knowing so much about STEM has been a great journey of personal and professional development that I look forward to continuing next semester and throughout my future career as a teacher.