Running Head: Sleeping through chemistry: A detour in the path to becoming a teacher

Sleeping through chemistry: A detour in the path to becoming a teacher

In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the

Master of Arts Degree in Curriculum and Teaching
Department of Teacher Education, Michigan State University

James R. Grulke

June 16, 2015

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Start of the journey
My dad knew everything. Anytime we would be outside or driving in the car he could
point out each bird, tree, or flower we would see. This is where my love of science started. I
loved learning about the world around us and how everything worked. Science was always my
favorite subject in school and continued throughout high school. My advanced biology teacher
in high school was awesome. I can still remember how much I enjoyed the insect collection we
had to do going above and beyond catching double the insects necessary for an A.
I knew I wanted to do something with science, but what exactly to do was the question.
Being a doctor was out of the question because it required too many years of schooling and I felt
research was also out of the questions because of all the repetition when doing labs. My dad and
step mom both were teachers so I had some experience with adults who were in the profession. I
liked working with kids and had general experience with teachers so it seemed to be the right fit.
I did not realize at the time that teaching would be more than just giving students
activities out of a text book. Learning to become a teacher and developing the craft of teaching
requires hard work and dedication. Three things in particular have helped me grow to become
the teacher I am and will continue to help me develop. These are my own life experiences
outside of teaching, developing quality plans based on standards, and knowing how to work with
diverse students.
A turn away from teaching
When I started at Michigan State University in the fall of 2003 I was a biology major
with a chemistry minor on the path to becoming a secondary education teacher. The only science

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course I had first semester was a basic chemistry class. The chemistry course started as a lot of
review of what I covered in my two years in high school. This prompted what seemed obvious
to me; sit in the back of the gigantic lecture room and go to sleep. Meanwhile I was spending a
lot of time doing research for a writing course that I had little to no interest in. About halfway
through my chemistry class I woke up during one lesson to find that I had no idea what the
professor was talking about. It was around this time when I was struggling with what I wanted
to do with my life. Hating college and being in a classroom I considered dropping out and taking
some time off. I at least knew that I couldnt be a teacher. I didnt want to spend the rest of my
life in a classroom. I enrolled in a class called Introduction to Parks and Recreation after
talking to a friend who had that major. After taking the class this seemed like the new path for
me. Instead of sitting in a classroom, I would get to work with kids through planning sports
leagues, afterschool programs, and special events.
Shortly after graduating in 2007 I found a part time job working for a zoo as the
admissions supervisor and about a year later I got my first full time job as a recreation
coordinator in a small town in south west Michigan. Through these positions I learned how to
work with both children and adults. I gained valuable communication skills working with
parents and coaches in sports leagues and gained a customer service attitude that is valuable
when making parent phone calls and e-mails.
In these positions most of my time was spend planning programs for other people to work
with kids. Although I did work with some camps and after school activities it was not as much
as I thought it would be. Having spent valuable time outside of the classroom, I was ready to go
back. So I decided to see how I could get certified.

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Back to the path

After nearly enrolling in two different colleges I finally found what I was looking for
back at Michigan State. The advisor there told me about the Woodrow Wilson Fellowship
designed to bring professionals back into teaching in the STEM fields in high needs schools.
The program was designed to grant certification and fellows would also be part of the Masters of
Arts in Teaching and Curriculum (MATC).
In the fall of 2011 I re-enrolled as a Biological Sciences major to take the necessary
courses needed to apply to the fellowship. I found myself in the same chemistry course I had
dropped almost four years earlier. Things were much different this time. Instead of sitting in the
back sleeping through class, I was up front and loving what I was learning. The boy walking
outside with his dad was back and I was enjoying the courses I was taking. In the four years I
was away MSU added an integrated sciences endorsement, which was perfect for me. Although
biology was my favorite, this endorsement would let me take a little of each of the sciences and
teach all science courses. It was a great combination.
While taking the additional science courses I found a job as a research assistant in a
pesticides alternatives research lab. This gave me valuable insight in how research is done in a
practical way. Instead of seeing labs as disjointed pieces to teach science I now saw how science
worked to solve real problems. I grew in my ability to follow procedures and see projects
through, something I would have to model for my future students.

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With two years of science courses fresh in my mind and new experience in a research
setting, it was time to learn how to be a teacher with an intensive summer of four masters level
teacher education courses.The summer was broken down into two classes at a time. One class
each session focused on teaching science at the secondary level while the other one focused on
teaching in diverse and high needs classrooms. I quickly learned that teaching was going to be
more difficult, but more rewarding than I had anticipated.
Planning quality lessons involved more than writing out what activities students were
going to do each day at the beginning of the week, using the book to guide you. Each activity
was to be carefully crafted to flow from one to the next, centered on a big idea. The subject
matter needs to be based on state and national standards. Teaching, I discovered, wasnt just
about lecturing and giving out worksheets with the occasional lab. It involved creating
productive discussions, bringing students thoughts central. Focusing more on student ideas than
what a teacher can say.
Learning to teach
The fellowship began in TE 891: Learning to teach in diverse contexts by learning how
to create lesson plans. This involved looking at the national standards, picking a topic we were
interested in and carefully designing a lesson with a partner. In one of the first lesson plans
(Artifact 1) I learned many things including how to take a standard and create a big idea from it.
This involved transforming it into student language and taking into account what else needs to be
known about this topic. From this I learned to create student objectives and determined what
scientific practices students should work on, while also teaching the content. This was a new
idea for me. I didnt even realize as a student that I was simultaneously learning how to do

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science while learning about the science topics. Assessments and activities were then developed
for students to work on. Finally, we reflected on how the lesson went and offered suggestions for
improvement. This was a lot different than how I though lesson plans would go. We were
introduced to the idea of backwards design. Taking standards, making assessments then deciding
what to teach instead of teaching and throwing together an assessment as a result. This keeps
teachers focused and helps students reach a goal rather than just ace a test.
Developing this skill continued in TE860. At this point my cohort and I learned how to
start making lessons flow. Instead of seeing each lesson as an individual free standing object,
they were part of a bigger picture. Each activity creating a lesson, each lesson working to grow
students understanding of a topic and growing the abilities to think and work like a scientist. We
worked on allowing students to discover through inquiry and also to follow the teachers lead
through an application sequence of model, coach, fade, and maintain. Finally, in this course we
learned how to bring it all together to teach an entire unit of material. Here we took an entire unit
and broke it down planning what we would do and how the lessons would flow in order to go
from start to finish and provide opportunities for students to excel in the topic. Teaching
involves more than just teaching. Meaning you have to also know the students that will share the
class room with you.
In TE 822 we learned about issues of race, gender, social status, and many other issues
that have an impacts on our students. Through many readings and class discussion I started to
develop an understanding of all the issues that students are faced with. As part of the class we
wrote an autobiography to help us understand our own culture and where we came from (Artifact
2). This was important for me to see what types of preconceived notions about different types of

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students I brought into this program. This autobiography helped me to see my own privileges
and helped me to remember an important lesson I learned which is when working with students
from difficult home lives to treat them with compassion, but dont pity them. Continue to hold
them to high standards and work alongside them to help them achieve.
In TE 822 we also created and analyzed a multicultural unit plan designed to appeal to
students of culturally diverse populations (Artifact 3). This unit plan built on our knowledge of
subject matter planning learned in TE 891 and 860 and partnered it with teaching to diverse
students. My partner and I consciously chose how to groups students, what materials were
taught and how the lesson was designed so that it met the needs of all students and helped
students grow in their ability to work in communities of diverse learners.
The summer flew by going from project to project rapidly preparing us for our internship
student teaching in the fall. Throughout the courses I couldnt help but think how important my
detour away from teaching was. I had matured and took greater interest and learned more in
courses if I had taken them in undergraduate classes. Years working in the real world helped
prepare me for the stress of my student teaching and first year of teaching.
The start of the road
Although I knew I was going to be in Detroit, I found out where I was going to teach
days before starting student teaching. It was a bit stressful but worked out as I ended up with two
great mentors. I taught a freshmen physical science/earth science course and physics. Even
though biology was my major the school was not teaching it that year. I was excited to try
physics since I created several physics lessons during the summer so I wasnt too upset. As far

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as the other class, I didnt realize at the time how important this would be for my first year of
teaching.
This was a huge year of observing my mentor teachers as well as other teachers in the
building to grow in my practice. During the internship I continued to learn how to create
effective lessons through TE 802 and TE 804. This was more exciting as we were devolving
lessons and units that were actually going to be used in our student teaching including one that a
partner and I developed on solubility. It was exciting to instruct the lesson in front of a mentor
who could give immediate feedback. Feedback was also given from the students who
participated in it. The class also gave different tools to teach. One tool that I developed was a
hypothesis checklist. This involves gathering students ideas on a subject and editing the list as a
class as more concepts are developed. This course also allowed time to reflect on our tool usage
(Artifact 4). This helped me to not just use a tool but critically analyze it in order to improve its
usage for the future.
We also engaged in professional learning communities (PLC) taking time to observe
other student teachers and evaluate and give feedback on how we taught then reflecting on how it
went. Time was also spent brining in student work to analyze a particular focus question. In one
set of student work my PLC group looked at how to improve students conclusions to scientific
investigations (Artifact 5). As a group we did not criticize one anothers teaching, but worked
hard to come up with solutions to the focus problem. Not only did this help the teacher in the
short term, but helped each member think about this problem of practice in their own classrooms.
In TE 803 we had an opportunity to do a case study on a student (artifact 6). This really
gave me an opportunity to single out one student from the crowd and analyze what affects

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different behaviors in students and what solutions may work to curb behavior or increase
learning. Professional literature was used to help develop solutions to the behavior issue and
create a positive relationship with the student.
The first year of teaching and beyond
The summer after student teaching I was able to be a paraprofessional at an alternative
school in the mornings and work with a research project observing biology teachers. The
paraprofessional job gave me new experience working with a different population of students.
The research project worked out well since I didnt get to teach biology during student teaching.
I was able to spend many hours watching teachers and observing their teaching methods in
biology. I also took TE 843 designed to help with teaching science literacy. Not just teaching
students how to read, but how to read and write to help them acquire the skills in the specific
content area. As part of this class I did a content area textbook inventory (Artifact 7). Using
different reading formulas and evaluation methods I looked at a physics textbook and its
appropriateness to be used at the grade it was. The book was judged on its readability and how
students responded to questions about the text. This gave me experience critiquing a piece of
curriculum and working on my communication skills as I would tell an administrator whether a
textbook was worth purchasing and using for a school.
Job hunting was another area where my time away from teaching was helpful. I had
experience designing a resume and interviewing that other incoming teachers didnt have. Even
with this extra experience was proving difficult to find a job and as the summer waned I got
more and more worried about finding somewhere to teach in the fall. Finally in mid-August I
received two job offers. One for an inner city charter school teaching physics and biology

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including one, possibly two, advanced placement (AP) courses and the other for a rural public
school teaching seventh grade science. In the end I decided to go with the seventh grade position.
Although I felt my preparation was solid, I thought it would be better for me and my students to
not try and teach AP my first year. So, in September I started working with a rural, primary
white, middle school population after spending a year with an urban, primarily African
American, high school group of students.
I missed my students from Detroit, but soon got my stride with the middle school
students. They were goofy and so was I, which helped a lot. This turned out to be the right
choice as the first year was very busy without having to teach Advanced Placement curriculum.
Having only one subject to prepare for helped keep me from stressing out. There were challenges
working with the other seventh grade teacher who relayed heavily on worksheets after spending
so much time learning how to teach through inquiry. It was a growth year learning to take what I
learned in school and applying it as lesson after lesson had to be planned in quick succession.
Having spent time in parks and recreation I was used to working with both students and parents,
which helped when conference time and parent phone calls came around.
In TE 861A, which I took spring of my first year I continued to develop my use of
effective formative assessment to help me gain understanding of where students were at each
moment throughout a learning cycle. A topic that we were teaching at the time was chosen and
an assessment of assessments at the beginning, middle, and end of a learning cycle were assessed
(Artifact 8). This was helpful in learning to create assessments that truly assessed what I wanted
to. I found it difficult to hone in on a particular skill or piece of knowledge without carefully

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crafting a good assessment. Finishing this course and my first year I am excited to move forward
and grow as a teacher and hopefully become a mentor to future new teachers.
My final course TE 871: Teachers as teacher educators is teaching me what it means to
be a mentor and how to develop beginning teachers. Having one year under my belt I am excited
to see where the teaching profession takes me. Though I had a short detour on the path to
becoming a teacher it has helped develop me and will continue to give me experience as an
educator. Having experience working in a zoo and a laboratory will give me different
perspectives as I become an educator of not only students but also fellow teachers. As I continue
to develop my craft using my experiences outside the classroom, learning to plan better lessons,
and learning more about the diversity of students will grow upon what has been developed
through the MATC program and develop me into a strong teacher committed to students.