Journal Entry
Polar TREC Reflection
Five weeks is just long enough to get a taste of life as a researcher/scientist and I feel I had a good sampling but it left me wanting more. I had more energy while in Barrow than I ever do back home even though I was up early and to bed late, feeling like I was trying to get time to stop. I didn’t want it to end. It was work and it was intense, but it was a vacation at the same time. The pressures of daily life back home can be exhausting, but the focus of concentrating on something that was new and cutting edge was energizing. I learned a lot but I want to learn more, not just about the science of my project, but how to better prepare my students for life in college or life as a researcher. I feel I am much more qualified to take my students down that path. It also made me take note of my weaknesses as a science teacher.
I went into the whole affair with an open mind with no expectations but with the hope that I would be seen as an important member of the team. One thing that stuck with me from the orientation in Fairbanks was to "make yourself valuable to the team”. I tried to do that and looked for ways to go beyond what I felt the researchers maybe thought a teacher would be able to provide in terms of expertise or work ethic. I could not provide much in the way of expertise on the project but felt I did work very hard. By the time I left, I did feel I was seen as a valuable member of the team and not just a visiting teacher, someone to humor for the five weeks I was there. I hope the research group felt the same way.
The fit between myself and the research group could not have been better. It’s hard to describe but I felt I had known Steve and Paulo for years after only a few days, and while this made the transition into the research team very easy, it also made leaving more difficult. It’s hard to describe the feeling of being so comfortable with a group that you feel like you were meant to be there at that moment or in that situation. That is how I felt in Barrow, like I was meant to be placed with the group I was, when I was. I’m not sure I expected that. As I write this I wonder how they felt about it. Paulo expressed his desire for me to stay longer and continue working, so much so that I started to feel bad that I was leaving so early in the summer. July 6th was not even half-way for them in their data collecting and the work was hard, physically demanding, which I liked.
Over the years I have been involved in many teacher training programs, some short as in a day or as long as several weeks and some were even involving a scientist or researcher for a period of time, but none were involved with an ongoing scientific research project where the data I collected was to be used at some point in a published paper. I may be jumping the gun but that is the idea, to have papers published with the data that I helped to collect.
I have had many students over the years go on and study science in college and beyond, which is very gratifying. With my new sense of science at the research and graduate levels, I feel I will be able to give my high school students a better foundation for their journeys ahead, whether it is another science in high school, the challenge of an AP science class in high school, or science courses in college. I will also challenge them to conduct research while in high school with the idea that it will open new doors for them, some that they may not have known were there and others that come from seeking out new challenges as a student, whether in high school or college. I will also continue to challenge myself and look for other opportunities to become involved in real research, whether it is a new polar TREC, or with some entity close by in my own community, or just myself trying to answer questions that I have about the world around me which continues to fascinate me.
A lasting image from my TREC