Science Autobiography

My name is Megan Catherine Larem and I am from Westmont, Illinois which is a small town about 45 minutes west of Chicago. When I was in elementary school we had three tiny elementary schools. I was from the smallest one South Elementary school from Kindergarten to 5th grade, but always had the largest class size. We would always bring in an extra teacher and I always ended up in that extra teacher's class. I remember hearing what the other elementary schools were doing with science like dissecting animals or doing other fun activities, which we were barely doing anything science related. I specifically remember in 2nd grade we were making volcanoes for a science lesson. Me, being the perfectionist that I am did not just want to bring in a small water bottle to create the volcano out of. So with the help of my parents we did some research to look at volcanoes and even how to create our very own out of clay. We took the water bottle that we were required to use and made a huge clay volcano out of it. I remember feeling like I had learned a lot more about volcanoes than the other students because I went and did research on my own. Another big part of my science experience that I remember was a group of us students that they labeled similar to a gifted group and we were part of Quest. This allowed us to be taken out of class and go into the LRC to do experiments with another teacher. There was one that we did on air and movement were we blew up a balloon and taped a piece of straw to the top of it that had string laced through. The string was taught and hung up from one end of the room to the other and we had our balloons on one end of the string and let go and got to watch our air being released from the balloon and the balloon moving. Another memory is of the life cycle of  chicks in 2nd grade where we had the eggs in the incubators and we raised them into chicks and same with the life cycle of butterflies. We had caterpillars that turned into butterflies and then we got to release them. In the older elementary grades we would switch teachers, my teacher would teach the science and the other teacher would teach the social studies. I remember that we would ALWAYS do the social studies and rarely switched to do the science even though it was my own teacher who taught it

Once I got into Westmont Jr. High in 6th through 8th grade, the only high school in my town and the three elementary schools fed into, we had science as an actual class that we went to for 50 minutes a day. It is hard to remember much of 6th grade. A lot of it was movies, worksheets and a poster we made after our lesson. Trying to think back I cannot recall a single thing we did that year. In 7th grade was when we got to dissect a worm. I love to go fishing so worms do not bother me, but the fact that it was cold and dead and had that formaldehyde smell to it, turned me off really fast to the idea of dissecting a worm. Once he was opened it I thought it was pretty cool to see the insides of the creatures I have been putting on hooks and feeding to fish for years. The rest of the year consisted of a lot of webs that we created while the teacher gave us the notes to fill them in with. I remember doing a simple machine unit as well, but I think that because of the fact that it was a lot of worksheets, it was something that I was really not interested in and did not stick with me. In 8th grade it was the same thing, we read from the book we took notes and we took tests on a weekly basis. I remember doing an experiment with liver, but that was about it. I believe that because a lot of it was not hands on I cannot remember what we did during those years. There is one other science experiment that I remember from Jr. High and it was an egg drop. We went upstairs to the computer lab and dropped them off the balcony that is there.

Moving onto Westmont High school with was the only high school in the town and the one that everyone from the Jr. High went to unless they decided to go to Catholic school. We had three science classes that we had to take. Freshman year you took biology and we dissected frogs. Which went a little bit better than the worm for me, but I am still not a fan of the formaldehyde smell. The teacher always had us takes notes and do at least one experiment a week. I liked that because the experiment went along with the notes that we took. We also had to do a science report at least once a week and we got to find a current science article and write a reflection about it. My sophomore year we had to take chemistry. While this was a lot of equations and notes we also did hands on activities to see the equations in action. One of my favorite things we did in chemistry was a mole project where we created actual moles and I made a watermolen. We also set balloons filled with different gases on fire. That was everyone's favorite experiments. During junior year you took physics. This was a really boring class to me. I did not understand it very well and the teacher was not very helpful. One of the big projects that I remember from this class was our bridge project where we built a bridge and then had to put weight on it and see how much weight our bridge could hold and we got many different ways to build the truss of the bridge with to try and get it to hold the most weight. My senior year I did not have to take any science classes, but I ended up taking a forensics class. It was really cool and we got to go to the FBI building downtown Chicago and we got to do mock crime scenes. It was not a lot of reading and taking notes, but it was a lot of hands on experiments like doing fingerprints with finger print powder and doing shoe molds out of different ground surfaces. Besides the one teacher that I had my junior year of high school most of the science teachers that I had in high school were very helpful and were always willing to make sure that we understood the material.

My physics bridge

Whole class with their bridges

In college I took two science courses. One was geology and the other was biology. The one thing that I liked about both of these courses was that not only was there a lecture but we had labs in which we got to go more in depth about what was covered during the lectures, which was really helpful. The lectures would get to be very long and most of the time would go in one ear and out the other, at least for me because it is hard to learn just through notes.

Based on my science experiences of my past I find that most students learn science the best through hands on activities. While some mapping and note taking in important, making sure there are hands on activities for the students to do to supplement the learning that is also going on in the classroom. Those fun experiments are the things that stick out the most in my mind about my past learning experiences with science. Those are what I remember and not the worksheets. Those classes are the ones in which I do not remember at all what we did except for the piles and piles of worksheets and papers in which we filled out. For me, my philosophy about science is that hands on activities are the ones that will always make sense to me.

Based on my cultural upbringing I learned that anyone could be a scientist, boy or girl. It was not something that just boys did. It was something that everyone could do. This really hit home as well when a friend on mine's older sister went to work for NASA. It really truly made me realize that women can do anything that men can do even in the science field. I want the young girls in my classroom to realize this is true. I want them to know that if they love science it is perfectly okay! I want them to love science!

Given my background in science I want it to be an enjoyable experience for the students. I want them to go through their lives and remember the science experiences that they had in Miss Larem's classroom. I want them to be able to go home and be excited to share with their family members about what they learned in science class.

I am currently a senior at Illinois State University and am in the PDS program. So far in my classroom I have barely seen any science going on. I hope in the future and as the school year progresses I will be observing some more science lessons being taught. While I was in a third grade classroom last semester, we did an experiment with the students that had to do with force and motion. The students each had a cotton ball they had on top of a bottle. They were to squeeze the bottle and try to force the cotton ball into the air and then into the cup that was right next to the bottle. This was something fun that the students loved to do and learned a lot from.