What are My Goals as a Teacher?

As a high school science teacher, I feel that it is my responsibility to prepare my students for life after high school.  As they begin college and/or plan for their careers, my students will need to have a particular set of skills to be successful.  My overall goal as a teacher is to do what I can to help them develop this skillset, which includes the ability to think metacognitively, the ability to analyze and synthesize information, and the ability to select and critically evaluate sources of information.  With these skills, students will feel enthusiastic and confident when approaching new academic and professional opportunities.  As an advocate of meaningful technology integration in the classroom, I feel that digital tools can be used to help students develop these skills. 

Goal #1: Helping Students Learn to Think Metacognitively

To help students learn to think metacognitively, I use several instructional strategies including collaborative learning, assignment reflections, and frequent formative assessment.  With regard to collaborative learning, I consistently have my students work in what I call “research teams” (i.e. groups of three to four students who work together for two units of instruction).  In these groups, students are encouraged to help each other identify gaps in their understanding and take steps to address these weaknesses.  For certain assignments in my classes, I also have students complete reflections in which they identify their errors and correct these errors.  Additionally, I make frequent use of assessments in which students are given explicit criteria for success, which helps them to self-assess.  I also provide a low-stress assessment environment by replacing low quiz scores with higher test scores.  This makes students more comfortable learning through failure.  Within my assessments, I break scores down by standard or topic to help students identify their areas of strength and areas for improvement.

Goal #2: Helping Students Learn to Analyze Data and Synthesize Information

To help students develop critical thinking skills like the ability to analyze data sets and synthesize information, I use case studies and image analysis activities.  I primarily use case studies with my freshman pre-AP biology students.  In these case studies, students are presented with a content-specific scenario that involves several data sets.  The students are then asked to analyze each data set separately and synthesize the information to make a conclusion about the scenario.  With my AP biology students, I use image analysis activities to promote critical thinking skills.  In these activities, students view an image illustrating a process (e.g., protein synthesis, the insulin / glucagon blood sugar regulation loop, nerve signaling) and are asked to predict what would happen if there was a disruption to that process.  In the future, I would like to incorporate more inquiry labs into both my freshman and AP biology classes.  Because inquiry labs require students to design their own experiments and determine how to organize and analyze their results to draw conclusions, they have great potential to help students develop critical thinking skills.  My AP students have engaged in long-term lab projects involving comparative anatomy studies and genetics experiments with Wisconsin Fast Plants, but I would like to do more to make these types of projects student-directed.  

Goal #3: Helping Students Learn to Select and Evaluate Sources of Information

As learners in an increasingly digitized society with many resources at their fingertips, students must be able to select and evaluate the legitimacy of various sources of information.  I feel that problem-based learning, or PBL, could help students to learn these skills.  PBL involves presenting students with an ill-structured problem that has no clear or simple solution.  Students work collaboratively to research the issue and devise potential solutions.  As part of their research, students must find relevant, high-quality sources from both digital and print journals, databases, etc.  When the research process is well-scaffolded by the teacher, students learn to evaluate the quality of resources they encounter.  I hope to develop and implement PBL instructional activities for my students in the future.  In order to do this, however, I feel that there must be a significant revision of the state biology curriculum and the College Board AP biology curriculum to shift the focus from breadth of information to depth.  In the future, I hope to open the lines of communication with policymakers at the district level, state level, etc. so that I can play a larger role in curricular decisions.

Supporting These Goals through Digital Tools

Using digital tools in my classroom may help me to accomplish these three goals by supporting and enhancing student learning.  For example, in my classroom, I use animations and simulations when teaching students about processes that cannot be physically modeled.  Simulations in particular can allow students to investigate processes more deeply because they are often able to manipulate several variables within the simulation.  When I use digital tools for instruction, I always try to ensure that the the digital tools directly support the content goals and instructional techniques that are most effective for these content goals.  This perspective is consistent with the TPACK model of technology integration (Koehler & Mishra, 2009).  With regard to assessment, I have used programs like Quia, Linkit, and AP Insight to provide immediate, detailed feedback that students would not necessarily receive with a traditional paper/pencil assessment.  Finally, I use my class Wiki page, which includes a class schedule and links to all assignments and supplementary resources, to communicate effectively with students and parents.  

Tying It All Together

In summary, my central mission as a teacher is to prepare students to enter life outside of high school.  In their future academic and professional careers, they will need to be able to reflect on their own thought processes (i.e. metacognition), think analytically, and evaluate the sources of information that are constantly at their fingertips.  In the previous paragraphs, I have discussed how I currently help students to develop these skills and how I plan to do more in service of this goal in the future.