There is no need to remind me of how interconnected people are in the society we live in. The whole change of my life path in my career has made me very aware of how networked everyone seems to be and how little privacy there is. This can be bad, and also good. Now that I am going to become a Philadelphia Public School Teacher I am really excited for the new networking I want to begin to do. There are couple of especially important areas of networking I want to participate in:
First, I want to build a network of scientists and engineers to be mentors for my students to help break down the barriers they face in seeing themselves going into those fields. I have begun to reach out to people within my own cultural networks and have begun to find people through friends and famiily but this is not enough because the students I serve are from different social identities than me and so I will have to reach further outside my own networks. This is more challenging because
“Life is so stratified that we are primarily embedded in networks of people like ourselves”. (Lareau, Penn Arts & Sciences magazine, Spring/Summer 2015).
One lead I have was a woman I met at Glaxo Smith Kline, who is involved in an association of woman of color who work in science. I need to follow up on this lead to see where it goes. My goal is to have made this contact over the next week.
A second networking goal I have is to find resources and people who are interested in remixing and re-imagining a biology curriculum to include a social justice context/perspective. I have been on the lookout and participated in one of the Philadelphia Teacher Action groups this spring, but most of the educators I encountered were in the humanities, rather than science. I have found a teacher in Chicago who is doing that and have emailed her and called her to leave a message, but she has not returned either of these. i hope she will be willing to share her ideas. I am trying to figure out another way to try to get in touch with her without appearing to be a stalker.
I remember reading what a classmate, Heather, said about how the climate fostered by high stakes tests was tearing apart the biology department at her school, in that no one would share with each other. That is the first I heard of that and I was shocked and appalled. Check out Heather’s blog. I think I am transforming the way I think about sharing, as a result of this class and I plan to really reflect on that idea in more detail in a future blog post.
Another way of finding science teachers who focus on social justice in their classes is through my NSTA membership. (National Science Teacher's Association). This is a huge national organization that I have been a member of for a while but never really thought of it as a network. With this new perspective, I will try to reach out.
Another interesting possible network I came across is the Rethinking Schools magazine which is now calling for submissions of articles about science and social justice. I am going to figure out a way to pull some contacts out of that for possible networking even if a network does not exist. Also I plan to try to submit an article for it before the due date in August. I think I will base my article on a social justice unit I began to create about lactose intolerance and social justice. Check out my blog Just Biology. about Lactose intolerance and Social Justice. It might change your understanding of this topic.
My classmates at Arcadia have been a network in which I have participated and learned so much. For example I found a two wonderful teachers for my STEM For All Summer program through classes at Arcadia. I thank Robert for giving me some good ideas for who to follow on twitter, as I am just a beginner in using it and not sure how to find good people to follow. Check out Robert’s blog. I hope to stay in touch with the other science teachers I have met through Arcadia, such as Heather.
After participating in a google hangout this evening, I am thinking not only about how to empower my students, but, also how to empower myself as an educator. I have not really thought about networking much before this class and now I think that joining networks of passionate and supportive educators is pretty important in my continued professional development.
Kathy