Está en la página 1de 3

Natural Science Education (NED) - Writing Sample

In the space provided below (the text boxes will expand as you type) please respond to each of the following questions in detail. Each response should be approximately 3-5 paragraphs (there are no text limits).

Describe in detail why you wish to pursue an MS in Natural Science (Natural Science Education) degree, including why you want to do so at this time and how you are planning to use the degree in the future: The most formative and informative educational experiences that I have had occurred in the realm of natural science education. Such moments of inspiration and awe were outside, but that seems to me a quite exclusive situation. Teaching natural sciences at Teton Science School has been quite easy; the natural classroom is spectacular, grandiose and captures students from all over with unexplainable excitement. However, I believe that the pursuit of inspiration through natural science education can and should occur in any place regardless of the appeal to the masses. Pursuing of a masters in NSE will give me the opportunity to push myself as an educator beyond the traditional spaces and places where one thinks about for Natural Science Education can be taught. My intention is to build an understanding and capacity that enables me to instruct of NSE in any place despite its natural or developed appearance. The desire to continue my studies in the field of natural science education comes from a passion for the out-of-doors born early in the woods of Maine under the care of my botanist mother. As we walked the woods she would identify and explain the plants we passed. I was just about growing beyond her lessons when the outof-doors became important to me beyond the plants. With family and friends I hiked hundreds of miles of trail. We skied and snow shoed in the winter and mountain biked in the spring and autumn. And my appreciation of the relationship between people and their place in the natural environment matured. The natural sciences emerged as lens of inquisition, a filter through which my interactions with nature might be deconstructed and understood. As I completed my studies at St Lawrence University as a conservation biology major with a second concentration in economics it became apparent to me that major governing bodies of our society, economics and politics need to understand the other to create balanced solutions for conservation and preservation. I found that the landscape equation [L(andscape)= A(biotic) + B(iotic) + C(ulture)] used by both bodies can overlook parts of each factor in the equation. Perhaps that is not the actual situation, but it is what I experienced as an undergraduate. Effective dialogue that synthesizes both realms of understanding was not easily created, even in upper level classrooms. My foci of inquisition now has a vector, education, as a pathway towards understanding and helping students become better synthesizers of complex problems facing our planet. The root of such problems can be understood through natural science when the social-ecological relationship is included. However I would like to push curriculum of the natural sciences to create a holistic awareness of place in students so they become informed citizens on a local and global scale. Completing the MS in NSE will add to my skill set for creating and implementing curriculum that teaches students a holistic understanding of the natural world and their place in it, through an understanding of how the natural world was constructed: ecologically, socially and economically. The implementation of this idea here in the Tetons is the NSE curriculum built on the permaculture work of David Holmgren. Permaculture philosophies are built on sound foundational knowledge of the natural sciences and are adapted to help people live healthier lives, personally and ecologically. Permaculture however seems to occur in places appreciated and valued for their natural beauty, but the foundations of permaculture can and should be applied to all places, including urban environments. Thus the real direction I will take a MS in NSE is towards understanding what permaculture concepts will look like in the language of natural science and how curriculum can be put in action to not only educate, but empower students to create amazing places no matter the geographic location.

As someone who has completed, or is currently involved in, the Teton Science Schools Professional Residency Program, describe a situation that you were particularly proud of where you were involved in teaching science to a group. Describe the situation, the group that was taught, the science content taught, your responsibility for the instruction (e.g., individual instructor, working in a team), your instructional approach, how the class was assessed, what you felt went well, and what you would change and why: Teaching fire ecology to Wahlert High School students at Bradley Taggart loop trail was the second day of a week-long program focused on the relationships between abiotic and biotic factors of the greater Yellowstone ecosystem. The first day of the program covered community ecology and during that day I had begun to introduce the role of disturbance in providing opportunity for organisms to move into a once occupied space. The theme on this second day was Diversity: designs by disturbance and was presented in four lessons: fire ecology, geology, glaciers and how water continues to play a role in the creation of landscapes. Our classroom for the fire ecology lesson was a semi-recent burn area on the Bradley Taggert Moraine. I began the lesson asking the highschool students to journal about how they build really good fires. On a white-board I recorded what the students wrote after they shared it back to the group. I categorized their responses into two categories: materials and conditions. Next I asked the students to look around their outdoor classroom and find representations of the materials and conditions they had mentioned. I finished by asking the students how they thought this area would burn and would it be easy to ignite a fire in this location. This engager transitioned into a focused description of fire regimes explaining different types of fuels, fuel load, what fuel load looks like in different forests by elevation, the connection between fuel load and fire severity/frequency and introduced the idea of fire suppression. Again I asked the students about our classroom, but in the context of fire regime, what type of fuel load is seen here, how often would we expect fires to occur, what would be the severity? Next I had the students age the lodge-pole pine in our classroom by number of whorls, each student aging three trees and as a group averaging the age to hypothesize the date of the last fire event in our classroom. To elaborate and connect fire disturbance back to Day Ones lesson on community ecology I asked students recall what plant adaptations we had talked about in regards to fire (serotinous cones, asexual reproduction from root sprouting, pioneer species and the preferences of certain communities). After introducing the term intermediate disturbance hypothesis I asked the students to think about in what sort of disturbance area would we see the most genetic diversity and biotic diversity. To stamp the lesson, I came back to ask what fire provides a landscape. Students responded about opportunity and space for new species, nutrients, open canopy and asked questions about old aspen stands as well as the fate of aspens as a species. Without fire arent the populations becoming genetically similar, prone to disease and more vulnerable? a student replied. By simply asking the students what they thought, I focused their attention back to the intermediate disturbance hypothesis. By this time snow was really starting to fall and I knew that we needed to move. I simply asked that while we were hiking onward that students look for evidence of fire as well as intermediate disturbances (fallen trees) and what was occurring in those places of opportunity, was it regeneration of similar tree species, was it detrivores recycling nutrients, herbaceous plants, or a combination of all three? During lunch break after some hiking we continued the discussion about how the observations made along the hike were facilitating opportunity for new species or new age classes and what sorts of animals we would hypothesize to use these areas of disturbance and early serial succession. I believe that the lesson started strong with an engager and did well to cover what fire provides landscapes, how to date an area for the last fire event to get an idea of what succession looks like as well as introduce students to the idea of fire regimes across landscapes and what that means for the severity/frequency of fire events. I would have worked to change the stamp and or introduce the culture part of the landscape equation sooner so that I may talk about fire regime alteration by humans since the 1920s. This way in the stamp and discussion of intermediate disturbance hypothesis students may compare and contrast the impacts of intermediate disturbance (naturally occurring fires) and the impacts of fire suppression on forest communities. This opportunity for compare and contrast could have created a journal prompt then continued discussion to stamp the lesson with how students think fire should be managed for the greatest genetic diversity and if this is best for the landscape equation, not forgetting why fire suppression was enacted. Such a prompt would allow student driven synthesis and a new perspective to investigate landscapes. Assessment of student learning was made during the lunchtime discussion on what observations and hypotheses were made regarding the observed areas of disturbance.

What strengths would you bring to our program that would demonstrate your ability to be a successful candidate and to contribute to the learning environment? Over the past few years my educators have told me I have balance and passion for living with as sense balance as much as possible. I take these comments with an appreciative inquiry and ask how so. I strive to be genuinely passionate, but this requires me to follow spontaneous inspirations. As an educator I am passionate about the subject I am teaching, but that simply stems from my own excitement for learning. The more I investigate a subject the more dimensions and interconnectedness to other subjects I discover. While teaching this fall I have used this awareness of connectedness to relate what I am teaching to what students may already know from a separate context. Using my knowledge of that subject I have been able to help students transpose their knowledge a priori into the context in which we are learning. While teaching community ecology and wrapping up the day in which we explored many communities that appeared to have over lapping species, I asked my high school students what they knew about a molecule. I asked them to recall different types of bonds between atoms and if they saw any sort of similarities with in the communities explored today. Some were right on it, but a few others needed a bit more clarity. I drew up the different communities we explored during the day as nuclei as the parts unique to and or constant to that community and electrons surrounding the different nuclei as parts that were shared or seen in multiple communities. With this model understood by students, I pushed the students a little further to inquire about how much balancing is going on among abiotic and biotic factors in the communities. From this inquiry exploded many questions about how these balances change spatial and temporally or if we remove one electron what happens or how the electrons are affected by a change in the nucleus. In working with many strong individuals of the graduate program I understand that we as a cohort are much like the molecule representing the different ecologic communities. Having an awareness of the balance in this molecule from a personal and interpersonal level is key to helping the cohort progress as individuals, educators and learners. When I become part of a new learning environment I work to become aware of others learning styles so that when it comes time to share in that group I can communicate most effectively to help others to their stretch zone in way that does not turn them off to the idea I am sharing. Another layer of that awareness is that I often find myself seeing and or understanding concepts differently than the mass of the cohort, which often benefits all as we work to learn about what makes up that difference in conception. In the next academic year I hope that this approach and intentional awareness may facilitate growth of individuals in the cohort and the discovery of new understandings previously off our personal radar because we have not been yet brought there ourselves. Practicing mindful personal and interpersonal openness and awareness is the most important strength I wish to bring the community as it benefits our academic experience as well as the communitys livelihood during an amazing period of growth.

También podría gustarte