Growth

As the year draws to a close, I feel like I have grown the most in understanding how to make the content interesting and accessible. I had the most fun in biology with evolution and invertebrate anatomy, and I was really able to make them see my interest. This coupled with all of the examples and personal anecdotes got them into it because I was into it. By this point, we had developed a good sense of community, and I feel like they students really respected me. This made connecting content more effective as well. Kids also love animals, and I made sure to bring in weird things plus stuff I knew they would like (water bears, which can live forever and are not actually bears and meerkats because of The Lion King).

In anatomy, I was usually able to bring in a personal story. It became a running joke that my family is super unfortunate because all of these health problems seem to afflict us. One thing I got better at was making analogies to relate concepts. The kids really liked the 'love story' in the muscle chapter and my blood lecture. Here, I made the generic Powerpoint reflect more of me (I was given resources by my director at the beginning of the year, and she had built the class herself at my school). I included a random example of viscosity (the most viscous liquid in the world- tar pitch) to expand on blood viscosity. I also liked to use scanning electron microscope images to really bring home how this is happening in their bodies right now.

The more I feel like I am relating to the kids, the more confident I feel when I am teaching, which I am sure also feeds into the cycle. It has made the second half of my year so much better than the first. Next go around, I can do this from the get-go, which should hopefully make my whole year better. The parts that aren't will just give me something more to look back on adapt. Either way, it'll be a win-win.