Week 4

Last week was one of light bulbs going on. I had several opportunites to use many of the tools that I have been learning and using with my project. I started to feel confident in what I was doing and had to ask questions less. This was encouraging and made me think how it relates to the classroom. Students at the beginning of the year are extremely receptive to how our classroom operates and want to do things the way we ask them. This lasts several weeks until they begin to feel comfortable with us and with their surroundings. The 21st Century Skill, "Demonstrate productivity and accountability by meeting high expectations", should be at the top of my list for the first month of school. I have certain expectations as to how the classroom should operate and in order to provide a learning environment for a large number of students everyone must master this skill. Employers expect a new employee to meet their expectations and when they do this it frees the employee to become more creative in their work. Once students are at the level of meeting my expectations they can become better able to free up their creative talents and use that energy to propel them further in their education. It is difficult to advance from the basic knowledge if you don't have a firm grasp of that knowledge. Some students may require extra time and, just like I needed time to feel comfortable in the lab, those students need extra time to feel comfortable in the classroom.
The rest of this week I will be testing the yeast I grew and analyzing the results. Hopefully my results will be better than the first trial. I have learned that knowledge, time and patience are the keys to my success. In the lab we can redo experiments to improve and allow us to be more successful. How about the classroom? More later.