My philosophy on education centers on the following beliefs and practices.

I believe students learn best when Students are engaged in the lessons. One manner in which I engage students in lessons is by relating the content to the students lives and to what the students find interesting. I take what my students value and see as relevant and use that to increase their motivation to learn the course material. For example, when covering the unit on evolution in biology, I engaged students and helped them understand the concept of selection by studying how bacteria become resistant to antibiotics and what that means for the students health. Furthermore, I keep students engaged in lessons by providing adequate amounts of scaffolding. This helps students feel that they will be able to be successful at completing a task, which in turn, causes them to remain motivated to complete the task. When students doubt they can succeed, they become disengaged and stop trying to learn course material. To prevent my students from feeling this way, I prepare materials that guide my students to help them solve problems. For instance, when beginning the unit on the atom in chemistry, I did a jigsaw activity in which groups researched and prepared PowerPoint presentations on different models of the atom throughout history. Instead of just asking my students to research the different models and submit their PowerPoints when they were finished, I gave each group specific questions to answer about each model. As students answered the questions they felt successful, and as a result, they were encouraged to complete the task and learn the material. I also engage students in lessons and help them learn course material by increasing the level of intellectual activity required in classroom activities. In designing my lessons, I seek to actively involve students. I design activities that require my students to think critically and synthesize ideas in order to help prevent them from becoming bored and disengaged. This is one reason why I like to begin and end lessons with puzzling questions such as, How does the carbon from a deceased individual end up in the leg muscle of a coyote if the coyote did not eat the deceased individual? These questions increase the intellectual demands placed on the students and encourage the students to be actively thinking throughout different pieces of the lesson. Education is tailored to the strengths and needs of individual students. Because not every student learns in the same manner, I differentiate my lessons using multiple instructional strategies in order to reach as many students as possible. In my classroom I use multiple modes to convey information, including PowerPoint lectures, online research and interactive simulations, videos, reading passages, discussions, writing activities, hands-on lab activities, demonstrations, drawings, data analysis, and small group work. With every topic we cover I incorporate several of these methods to ensure that whether a student is a visual learner, kinesthetic learner, or any other type of learner there is some activity that is targeted at his or her specific learning needs. In addition, I also use NWEA MAP data and formative and summative assessment data to drive instruction. I use the NWEA MAP data to prepare lessons that meet students where they are in order to help the students learn by building off of their existing knowledge. For example, my chemistry students NWEA data reflected that they had below grade level math skills. Thus, when studying the gas laws, I spent extra time working with the students on math concepts like order of operations to ensure that the students had the math skills necessary to solve the problems. Furthermore, I use the formative and summative assessment data I collect to identify concepts that need to be re-taught before progressing to new material and to identify lessons that I need to revise for the following year. Students are able to make their own connections between concepts. Learning is about making connections among course concepts, and when individuals make those connections for themselves, that is what makes the content meaningful and useful in their lives. While I cannot make the connections for the students, I can create lessons and activities that focus on helping the students make connections and take ownership of their learning. In my classroom I use a variety of tools focused on helping students make connections between course material by making their ideas

central. These tools include entire class and small group models, hypotheses lists, evidence buckets, explanation checklists, post-it note tickets, and summary charts. I often use one tool, the hypothesis list, to elicit students background knowledge about a particular concept. Using these tools helps keep the students ideas at the forefront of the lesson, which helps them make connections and learn the material. As we learn more about a topic through different activities, I have the students revise their original ideas many times using post-it notes. As they learn more, students use the post-it notes to add ideas that were not included in the first place, to elaborate on different ideas, and to change or eliminate ideas that we recorded originally. This allows the students to see how their ideas have changed and evolved over time, assisting them in making connections by building off of their existing knowledge. To help students further see how key concepts fits together, I have students record the take away messages and key points of the various activities we have done in summary charts. I feel that by using these tools to elicit students responses their ideas are shaping the lesson. As a result, the lesson is focused on the students understanding and misconceptions, best allowing for the students to learn the content being presented. What students are learning is driven by what they are doing. I believe that what students do is what they learn. In my classes I design lessons and activities that incorporate scientific practices and hands-on activities to help teach the content. I believe that having students use scientific practices such as asking questions, designing experiments, interpreting data, using models, and developing scientific explanations helps the students learn the content associated with the practices as well as acquire lifelong skills and strategies that can be transferred to other classes as well as to future jobs. Students do not fully acquire the skills and understand content by only reading about the practices and concepts. I believe that students gain skills and knowledge by actually carrying out scientific practices and taking part in hands-on learning activities. As a result, I have my students design experiments to answer questions like Do double-stuff Oreos actually have double the amount of filling compared to regular Oreos? so that they are able to acquire the critical thinking skills that are involved in developing a detailed procedure. I have my students interpret data tables and graphs about energy transfer and succession to help them learn how to extract patterns and trends from data as well as to help them understand different biological processes. My students write scientific explanations that include a claim supported by evidence and reasoning to answer questions like, Which do you believe has more of an effect on making you the person you are today, nature (genes) or nurture (environment)? to help them improve their literacy skills as well as to provide them with opportunities to synthesize information to help them learn the content. I prepare hands-on activities such as modeling mitosis and meiosis with pipe cleaners and modeling DNA replication, transcription, and translation using Twizzlers, marshmallows, and toothpicks to help my students visualize the processes as well as to help them become comfortable with using models to explain scientific phenomena. Positive classroom behavior is of primary focus. In my classroom, I focus on praising students for the appropriate classroom behaviors they display instead of constantly asking students to stop behaving in certain manners. For example, when I ask my class a question and a student blurts out an answer, I will call on a student who raised his or her hand and thank the student for raising his or her hand, without acknowledging the first student. I like to praise students for what they are doing well instead of always focusing on the negatives of student behavior as I have found that managing classes in this manner helps to create a caring, encouraging, and optimistic environment in which students feel safe and able to share ideas and learn. In addition, I have found that responding to students in this manner decreases the amount of disruptive behaviors that occur, and as a result, I am able to cover content in greater detail, increasing the amount of learning that occurs in the classroom. In summary, my teaching philosophy promotes a student-centered classroom in which students are actively exploring subject matter and making connections between course material. I strive to provide a conducive, trusting environment where students learn supported by a method that best fits their needs.