Developing as a Proffessional Educator

Building Skills

I do not consider getting my credential to be the last step on my road to developing as a professional educator, rather just one of many on a continuing journey, and I continually seek out meaningful opportunities to increase my knowledge and skills.

To this end, I applied, and am pleased to report that I was accepted, to the Exploratorium Middle School Summer Institute from July 17th to August 3rd.

Check out this fun video my group made there.

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Staying Connected

I feel that another way to stay connected as a STEM teacher is to keep challenging myself. When I found out that my school, as a special event to celebrate the end of testing, wanted to dump buckets of water on teachers if students hit a target. I grabbed a buddy and decided to take on the project using only junk I already had lying around in my basement and science closet with no trips to the hardware store (FWIW the alternative was just going to be our principal pouring buckets of water on people, kinda lame). I hope you enjoy my $0.00 "Jank Tank" build video half as much as the students enjoyed soaking their teachers with it. Trying new things helps me and my students sustain energy for learning, even this close to summer.

Advice for New Teachers

I think the most important trait for predicting whether or not someone will succeed as a teacher is simply persistence. My determination to just make it through my first, admittedly challenging year, while simultaneously getting my masters in education was downright stubborn. Looking back, I don't know how I did it, except to say that I simply never made failure an option. Your first few years in the profession will almost certainly be the most difficult, but if you can make it past those, you will have a long and rewarding teaching carreer ahead of you.