Status: Penn State undergraduate student (expected graduation in May 2017)
Education: B.S. in Secondary Education (Penn State University, 2017)
Hometown: Shrewsbury, York County, Pennsylvania
Favorite Science Video: How plants communicate – because animals aren’t the only organisms that need to share information
About Me
I am a rising senior at Penn State and I’m studying to be a middle school and/or high school science teacher. I’m from Shrewsbury, Pennsylvania, which is in York County. When I’m not in school, I’m a trumpeter in the Blue Band, an instructor at the Mathnasium of State College, and a maintenance worker at Shaver’s Creek Environmental Center. My favorite way to spend my free time is with my friends and family, whether we’re hiking, working outside, playing racquetball, going to a baseball game, or just sitting around and watching movies (one of my favorites is the Lord of the Rings trilogy). When I’m not with them, I like to spend time in nature, read National Geographic, and make maps out of duct tape. My favorite areas of science are ecology, astronomy, and chemistry, and I’m super excited to share them, and the other fields of science, with the campers at Science-U!
My Science-U Development Goals
Teaching Scientific Concepts and Skills: I want to develop my competency in this area because this is one of the major tasks of teaching science as a professional educator (and as a mentor at Science-U!). While science is about much more than memorizing facts, scientists need to know information in order to make new discoveries, and people who want to follow the progress of those scientists have to be able to learn that information as well. This is the case for everyone from tenured college professors to young children who are just starting to explore how the world works. As a mentor and future educator, I want to learn more about how my campers are able to understand and remember new information and use that to help them to learn as much as they can, so that when they need this knowledge to further their own discovery, they will have it at their disposal.
Teaching Problem-Solving and Critical Thinking Skills: Science is all about using the knowledge that we (both as individuals and as a society) have acquired to solve problems and answer the questions that we have about the world. Because of this, problem-solving and critical thinking skills are essential to successful scientific exploration and discovery. This summer, I want to learn, from working with campers, how to best teach them these skills so that they can further cultivate and use them throughout their future in science.
Motivating and Leading Others: An important role for educators is inspiring their students and getting them excited to learn more. Through working with campers over the course of the Science-U season, I want to learn more about what gets campers excited to learn and make their own scientific discoveries. I also want to learn how to empower campers so that when they face challenges, they have the confidence to keep moving forward and to push through to find success (because we all know that scientific discovery almost never works on the first try).
My Favorite Science-U Moment
My favorite moments at Science-U were during CSI camp when my campers were fervently using what they knew and had just learned about forensic science to try to incriminate Dr. Defelice. Not only were the campers extremely passionate about justice (or just about convicting Meredith), but they also used everything that they had learned to attempt to do it. And it was hilarious to watch them glare and yell at the director of the camp.
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