Sixth Week

This was the last week at Kemin and I'm so glad I had a chance to participate in the summer externship program. I can't wait to see how I'm going to be able to integrate what I've learned into how I teach my classes this coming year. Thanks to Kemin and all of the great employees there who allowed the teacher externs to become part of the process. We learned a lot.

In the lab this week, we had a chance to have another shot at the digestion experiment. Our result so far haven't really given us the information we were looking for, but we have been able to use the data to continue to improve the process and early in the week, we decided to run the experiment again. This time we had a chance to run the entire experiment, which included a second step that we hadn't tried yet. Multiple rounds of problem solving and brainstorming were built into the process. I've reflected a bit about my students' level of persistence during problem events, but I need to make sure I hold my self to the same standards dealing with lesson plans and the processes that go on at Carlisle. I need to make sure I continue to use the incoming information to improve quality lessons and develop new ones, along with helping our high school be more effective.

When it was finally time to analyze the data from the experiment, we had a pleasant surprise. It seemed to work. That's not to say it was perfect and we didn't still have questions, but it was our best try yet and my first thought was I wanted to run it again and see if we could reproduce the results. We didn't have a chance to do this during my last week and it would have to wait. I finished up the week helping prepare for the upcoming stage of the project the team had been working on the time I was there. It's been great to not only see the day to day work being done in the lab, but also the business process of trying to get a product to the market. There is a lot more to it than I thought. That sentence probably works for the whole experience.

Fifth Week

This week continued to reinforce the ideas that I have previously expressed. Most of the work that we did this week was for the digestion test that I helped develop. We ran it a couple times and each time presented new problems. I looks like I might not be here long enough to see the benefits of this experiment. I would consider this whole experiment to be very inquiry based, from its development to its practice, and the biggest thing I noticed in terms of bringing this process back to my classroom is the enourmous amount of time it has taken, at least when put in the perspective of class length, school year and the amount of ideas that are required to be taught in a given year. I think that because of different pressures, we aren't likely to let students in the process of an inquiry experiment finish. Maybe some students finish or reach a point where they can use the data to support the concept being covered, but each lab group could be different in terms of completion time, problem solving ability and different problem events that might occur for one group and not another. I think it is hard to do real science in the timing systems in place in school now, but I think this experience has helped me prioritize what parts need to be done and I can work at fitting them in the current timing system or look into different timing systems.

Fourth Week

At the beginning to the week, we had a meeting to discuss how projects from other divisions of Kemin are progressing and it was interesting to see how the different parts of this large company communicate with each other. Most of the week we continued to do tests for another lab to help them acquire data.

We also continued to work on the development of the digestion experiment that we would be running next week. We had a couple meetings to get ideas together and to problem solve. It was fun to be part of it. At the end of the week, I got to help write the protocol for the experiment and it really seemed to mean a lot to me by the time we got to that point. From getting ideas from literature, to the handful of brainstorming meetings and finally to put it all together on paper for the first trial of the experiment. I expect it will have changes that will need to be made and problem solving that will need to be done. I've learned enough this summer to know to expect this and I'm look forward to working on it.

Third Week

Wednesday afternoon, Kemin took all the summer employees out to eat and to the state capitol for a tour. This was a fun chance to get to chat with some of the other people who were new to Kemin. The other externs and I also had some really good conversations about what we were learning, how we thought we might be able to bring these things into the classroom and also what kind of strategies we currently use in our classrooms. It was really productive time and I'm looking forward to planning for some of these things for the beginning of this next school year.

The next day, Kemin held a gatekeepers meeting that included all of the innovation center employees, Kemin's president and Kemin's owner. In this meeting, ideas and projects were discussed to decide whether or not they should continue from that point. It was nice to see people asking real questions and offering criticism to try to better the project or use of Kemin's resources. This truly seemed like a team effort. I think this helped me focus on grading in my classroom. It should be results based and I like to think that it currently is, but I'm sure there is room for improvement. I believe all of the employees tried hard on their proposals and projects, but that didn't guarantee that they would move on or escape criticism. The employee's attitudes had to be of the mind to take the ideas and questions from the gatekeepers and try to make improvements. This is a great lesson for education as well. We need to give honest feedback to our students and help them build the mechanisms to take that information and keep improving.

I was able to be quite a bit more active in the lab this week and felt like I was being more helpful. We ran several test over the week. We also had to do some problem solving to try to get our tests to give consistent data and then we tested our possible solutions. Problem solving is a mentality that I need to continue to try to have my students develop. At the end of the week, I was able to sit down with the team and start to piece together the digestion test that we will be running soon. This was where the literature research was helpful and saved us a lot of time.

Second Week

After my second week at Kemin, I'm starting to get a little more comfortable with the different tests that the molecular biology team does on a regular basis. On Monday, I got to run another experiment on my own and it turned out pretty well. I also got my own Kemin lab book to keep track of all of the experiments that I participate in. I've had my chemistry students do lab notebooks for all of their experiments in the past and other times I have omitted them. I knew it would be great practice for college and now I see that the lab notebook is a big part the science industry as well. I also got to sit in on a training for lab notebooks and got to learn about some of the legal importance of a lab notebook. I'll have to make sure I continue to use some form of this to help students build skills in this area.

This week I also got to help out quite a bit with a milling process to prepare our samples for the experiment we ran. This was very different from the other things we had done in the lab and it reminded me that being a scientist isn't all lab work. The scientists here regularly need to make presentations, write papers, attend and contribute in meetings. I think these are probably common in business in general and the more practice we can give our students the better. Reading research is also a big part of the process here at Kemin and I've been able to do a bit of it myself. Much of this material would be nearly useless if you didn't have a strong background in science terms and concepts and I think we need to keep this in mind when working with our students. I think we are moving away from focusing on "memorizing the terms" in science education, but I think we have to make sure we don't omit them or stop using them, we just need to make sure we take concepts beyond the terms. I think for us to be able to say or at least prove that someone has a "deep understanding" of a topic, they need to know many of the terms and systems related to a particular topic.

At the end of the week, I was able to run another experiment by myself and it went pretty well. Earlier in the week I helped out with a part of an experiment and made a pretty silly mistake that cost us an hour of work. Instead of not letting me do that part again, their attitude was to make me do it again and this time do it right. Sometimes I feel like we try too hard to protect our students from failing and making mistakes. I learned a lot from this experience.

First Week

My first week of my externship at Kemin is over and it has been really revealing. The first day I had a chance to get to meet the other people who work in the molecular biology lab, which is were I'll be this summer. I was able to observe two assays and a gel electrophoresis being done during the first day and it was eye-opening to see how much technique and special skill, at least it looked that way to me, is needed to do many of the day-to-day operations. It's a reminder that I need to make sure I give my students a chance to practice the fundamentals of working in a lab and hold them to those fundamentals. I was able to practice using some of the equipment that I haven't used for awhile. Much of the equipment can be found in a high school science lab, but there are parts of the lab that are awfully expensive and probably not practical or durable enough for use in most high school labs.

It was interesting to see the difference in the level of persistence between the employees of this lab and my students. This probably isn't a fair comparison, but during the first week, the data that was being gained wasn't moving the project forward and it was likely that there were one or more things going wrong. The team looked into other options and tests to try, even when they required a quite a bit of effort to do. One of the experiments that we ran at the end of the week took two people about the whole day to run. The end of week meeting was awesome to sit in on. The team was brainstorming for solutions to the problems and putting together a plan to procede with. For many of my students, it would be more likely for them to give up when an unexpected problem arises or to just assume what they have is "good enough". This reminded me that it is important that we have high expectations for students and help them practice and develop their mechanisms for problem solving that actually have a chance of solving the problem.

The amount of time need to run any of the experiments I've seen so far don't fit in at all with the concept of a 45 min class period. One of the most stressfull parts of this experience has been getting to help out with parts of an experiment that were six hours in and dealing with incredibly small amounts of material that are indistinguishable from each other with the naked eye. I don't feel like the structure of school scheduling is very well suited for giving our students these kinds of experiences to help prepare them for college or their carreer. At the end of the week I got to run my own experiment. It took several hours and I had to ask a lot of questions. The amount of continous focus and dexterity required was surprising. Since the process was fairly new to me, I really had to keep an idea of what was just done, being done currently and what needed to be done all at the same time. It didn't turn out as well as I would have liked, but I guess I'll need to keep practicing!