Chelen Johnson
This virtual team collects all independent research presented in 2017, and done by NITARP or Spitzer alumni with (or without) students outside of a formal NITARP team.
My NITARP experience has made me rethink my entire approach to science education. Many of my students expect me to do the work and pretty much hand it to them all wrapped up and neat. Science education must involve a great deal of discovery by the student and not a string of topics with definitions.
So many of us science teachers do labs where the end is known (which is sometimes necessary to make sure they fit in a class period and that the students understand the concept we're trying to learn) but that's not really science.
This past year was a very intense NITARP experience for me, stretching my intellectual and technological skills beyond their limits while learning to be a mentor teacher and of course transferring as much of this experience to my students as possible.
