My name is Beth, or Ms Denson, depending on who you are. I currently teach Biology at Patrick Henry High School in Roanoke, VA.

I received my B.S. in Biological Science with a concentration in Microbiology in 2015 from Virginia Tech, and this is my final project for my Master's Degree in Science Education from Virginia Tech. I received a 192/200 on my Biology Praxis II and a 169/200 on my Chemistry Praxis II. This is a link to the score report.  

I joined the VSTA in 2017. In my free time, I assist Dr. Birgit Scharf's research team with lesson plans for their outreach program to Giles County High School. I spent a fair amount of my young adult life working in a microbiology research lab and even published a paper as a second author. This sentence will link you to the abstract. I decided to pursue a PhD in microbiology and left after six months, because I was unfulfilled. I figured out that what I wanted was something that I had always done but never thought of doing: teaching. That discovery has culminated in this project. 

Thank you for reading. 

Reflection on Evidence of INTASC Standard 4

My bachelor’s degree officially is “Biological Science with a concentration in Microbiology,” but what that means is that I have a wide realm of experience from all over the field of biology and expertise in microbiology. Microbiology is not heavily referenced in the Virginia Standards of Learning so bully for me. I am glad I have such a wide base of experiences academically because that lends itself well to my content knowledge and makes me feel a lot more secure over a wider range of topics.

I spent two and a half years doing microbiology research and that benefits me greatly in the classroom, and as a science fair mentor because I have a wealth of experience in being the researcher, so that means I generally know what my students need to succeed in a project. It also means that I get excited when we do inquiry and my excitement bolsters my students along as they struggle. My content area knowledge is solid, and I am glad that I have the expertise I do.

I have covered mitosis, meiosis, the Central Dogma, heredity, evolution, classification, and ecology to my students. It has been a blast. My students have grown a lot in their knowledge and ask me good questions. When we talk about the Cell Theory, they ask, “where did the first cell come from then?” I am so proud of them: they think they have stumped me, but they have tipped their hand. 

When we talked about heredity and evolution my student asked me about race, and why people’s skin colors are different and we riddled out that there is no biological basis to race, and it was like a light went on in her head. Her classmates were rapt to the exchange, because this student was vehemently anti-evolution up to this point, and then she paused and said she needed to think more about it. She has since become more comfortable with the concepts in an epistemological sense.

As far as my education training goes: I was not prepared. The academic models that I learned are so far from the reality of my experience of the American classroom, and it is so frustrating. I feel like I went through the cycle of grief. The hard part about inquiry is that it requires the students to feel safe and open in the classroom. If you are operating in an American school that does not have a good community structure, then you are going to struggle when you attempt to put inquiry into action. Once I had established a strong rapport, my students were much more willing to open up to inquiry.

I feel like education training should include acting classes, because I have to act a lot in my job. I actively manipulate my students when I teach, I emote with my body, practically play charades, and my students respond well to that. When they are too worked up to be quiet, I sit on a stool with my legs crossed at my knee and look at my watch and wait. It is surprisingly effective. I did not learn that in teacher school.

I also feel like I would have been served well with a little bit of counselling training or social work training. I manage a lot people who have a lot of emotions and who have lived a lot of life experiences. Lessons from Teaching in American Society come to me often. I work in a rather diverse community and I have to tread very carefully as a white, upper-middle class woman. I am grateful for the learning I did in that class, because it helped me understand a few things. When I came into my classroom, I got a lot of wariness from my Black students and it was a struggle to build rapport with them because they were so withdrawn. Not to sound stereotypical, but I bonded with a couple students by talking about shoes and hair under the advisement of their counselors. I also met with parents and voiced my belief that I am a member of students’ support team and viewed it as my role to help the student succeed, which built a lot of bridges. 

I am grateful for the training I have, but I do not believe that the current system we have for teachers prepares them for the reality of being a full-time teacher. There is a lot of sink or swim, but you build your own little community within your school and make it happen.