PLTW Training: Master Teacher Reflection

I have been teaching Project Lead the Way curriculum for the last 4 years, and I absolutely love it. I love the way that they teach “new teachers” curriculum—by having them go through the lessons and do the activities that their students complete.

I applied to be a Master Teacher in January. I had to make several videos and then I did some online training modules. I had to get 2 letters of reference.

I got accepted and then that meant I was able to train adults to learn the curriculum. I am going to travel to two places this summer—Spokane, Washington and Las Vegas, Nevada.

This past week I was able to travel to Spokane, and I worked with 5 teachers from Spokane Public Schools to learn one of the curriculum modules from PLTW, called Science of Technology. This is one of my favorite modules because it involves ice cream, roller coasters, making and testing glue, nanotechnology labs, and simple machines. It is a lot and when I think about how much we covered in three days I am amazed.

Since I had not trained adults before I was nervous. Luckily, I had an amazing Master Teacher (I was the Apprentice Teacher), I was able to learn so much from her. I also got to present on one of my favorite things in the world to talk about “Recruiting Girls in STEM.”

Spokane was absolutely gorgeous. It is in the mountains, they have water (and waterfalls), pine trees, some rolling hills, low humidity and abundant sunshine. My hubby came along to and loved seeing the sights in Spokane. He walked the trail, found some amazing restaurants and visited four of the campuses that were close by.

Like any teacher, this experience helped me to reflect on what I want to improve upon for my next training.

1. Time—There is not enough, and we are going to have to stick to deadlines better. There may need to be more homework assigned, but we also need to realize that the adults have lots of responsibilities when they head home each night—not just school related responsibilities.
2. Discussion is vital—even though we are on a time crunch, we have to allow for discussion. This is what helped our group in Spokane because they were able to see how the curriculum would work for them.
3. Advance Planning—communication between the affiliate, the master teacher, and myself is important. We have to make sure the supplies we need are there ahead of time and we need to know who is presenting what and how we are presenting it.

We had a great group of teachers and it was such a positive experience for me. If I didn’t have so many other responsibilities at home, I would seriously consider traveling and training more this summer. However, mommy, grad school, new house, wife duties—they all have to take priority. (I am ok with that.)

Here is a Flipagram that I made to highlight what we did. You can check it out, here:


http://flipagram.com/f/YA7p7KnirS