530 Final Examination

If ours is truly to be a democratic society, and I am not going to entertain the debate of democracy or republic, the voice of each of the constituents must be heard. As we move through the 21st century it is an imperative for all that truly want a democratic nation to serve those individuals who have been marginalized over the past 100 years or so. Education needs to focus on the redistribution of educational capital to accomplish this goal. Pertaining to the educational capital as it exists today it appears that the "rich get richer and the poor get poorer." This is a travesty and my personal vision is to redirect this archaic and poorly reasoned tenet of public education.

Living in San Diego County and doing both of my Clinical Practices (CP) in North County, one cannot help but notice the incredible number of English Learners (ELs) especially those whose native language is Spanish. In my CP2, I plan on creating an exhaustive list of English-Spanish cognates for all of my ELs (all of whom are native Spanish speakers). Chemistry and science in general use a vernacular that is not common to English speaking students. I can only imagine the ambiguity and frustration that my ELs must experience. As one of my students told me last semester, "Mr. Mac, I read the definitions but I don't understand the words they use to define it." I want to ensure my ELs have every opportunity to demonstrate their mastery of the content and if it means they need to write in Spanish, I will get the material translated.

I plan on becoming fluent in Spanish over the summer. I have a fairly strong working knowledge of Spanish so the task is not as heroic as it might sound at first blush. In the field of science the Latino population is grossly underrepresented. I know from first hand experience having worked in San Diego biotech the last 15 years. Many of the entry level positions in biotech do not require more than a basic working knowledge of chemistry and biology. It is reprehensible that the Latino population has not gained a greater presence in this field. I want to be able to communicate completely with my Latino students and hope that by learning Spanish, I will be able to create deeper bonds with these students such that they can enrich my learning/teaching experience as well.

I will seek opportunities to use an inquiry-based model for teaching science from my first day of teaching. I have a cursory vision of how this looks, but need to tease out the actual how-to portion of this methodology. My goal is that after a couple of years of experimenting with this methodology, that I can begin to master it. Discovery generally follows a natural curiosity to explain natural phenomena. The paradigm of teach the laws, do some problems and show me that you can do the problems on a test does not represent how real science gets done. Interestingly, one of my frustrations in the pharmaceutical industry over the last 25 years is the paradigm shift to meeting time lines. Gant charts have spoiled the science. The industry used to follow the leads that came out of the lab. Today, they are directed to meet time lines. I want my students to have the revelations and "ah ha" moments and I don't believe that is possible in the traditional modes of teaching science.

The action plan of promoting inquiry-based teaching effects a more powerful teaching pedagogy. This type of teaching will lead to newer and hopefully better new curriculum paths. Similarly, the assessments will likely be more authentic and the final products will look more like projects, demonstrations and research projects rather than paper or pen scrawled over a piece of paper. The inquiry-method should foster collaborative efforts for students and change my role to more of a facilitator and mentor. My efforts to become fluent in Spanish and engage more of my Latino students in their native tongue provides a more comprehensive support for this under serviced group. Hopefully, it will provide me with a richer and deeper understanding of these students. My goal to help close the science achievement gap especially as it relates to Latino students here in San Diego County connects almost all six legs of the graphic organizer presented in class.