Blog #3

It has been a long hard road from August when I had just recommended Kupu to help find guest speakers and possible venues for a math department field trip.  I was not planning on planning a field trip this school year let alone 6 field trips.  

Yesterday was my field trip, which was the first of the 6.  I was sooooo nervous, anxious and scared.  I could hardly sleep because I was even more afraid of oversleeping and being unprepared.  I had packed everything the night before but I was still extremely worried about forgetting something.  I had packed:

Hand sanitizers 

Toilet paper

Plastic bags and trash bags

Sunscreen

Bug spray

Snacks for the students

A first aid kit

A 5 gallon water jug

Those are all things that I am packing for each teacher like I had just done last night for the next teacher and their students going tomorrow.

I had also packed extra things just to be safe like:

Extra shoes (in case a student had forgot to wear shoes they would have the option to wear my shoes.

Extra socks

An umbrella

Extra hats (for students if they wanted to use one)

and body spray

I was going crazy that morning.  I needed to go to the store to get ice for the water jug and also to try to get to school as early as possible to collect students field trip forms because as of 2/22 I only had 18 field trip forms with the $3 for transportation collected...I have 74 students total and I ended up canceling one bus on 2/22 for my field trip because from asking my polling my students, it looked like I would have 30-40 staying behind...This was tough for me given how much work I have put into this field trip but I understand since I had only given out the field trip forms on 2/18 and 2/19 so the students 1-2 days before the field trip to turn in their forms...It is mostly my fault that they had so little time...I should have started this whole process a lot earlier but I just didn't know what I needed to do. I have had a co-planner this whole time who is a close friend of mine but we were not communicating very well for the last few months since we are both so very busy.  Also I really misinterpreted how long it would take for teachers to fill out a simple form for me and get it back to me that I ended up hunting most of them down.  Each teacher had to have their department head sign a teacher accountability form but I had just told them to turn it into me and I would get it signed for them to save me precious time.  Also my co-planner was suppose to secure the buses for each field trip since she gets the buses for all the Math Team Meets.  It was not until 2/16 that I finally secured all the buses for the field trips after many many phone calls to Roberts and Grounds as well as all of the teachers going on the field trips and the site coordinator of the Waianae Mountain Watershed Partnership (WMWP).  

Anyway back to the field trip.  I had collected an additional 13 more field trip forms and so their were a total of 31 students and 4 teachers going on the field trip.  I had two teachers in our team staying behind to watch the students that were staying behind.  There were about 30 students total that actually stayed behind and there were about 10 that were absent.  

I was literally running around like a crazy person that morning collecting forms and money and trying to keep all of that organized while trying to get students to go to the bathroom before we left for the bus.  I had one female student that had her form and money but no shoes and she didn't want to wear my shoes so she stayed behind.  

It's so strange to be the one that everyone is looking to for answers and for leadership on a field trip.  I have never been that person before.  I have never had to feel that stress before and OMG it is stressful!

Once we finally got to the bus at around 8:18am when we were scheduled for a 8:20am pickup.  Once on the bus I relaxed just a little after confirming my lists and sending in the names of students that were on the field trip to attendance.  

However, our bus driver had never been to the Waianae Kai Forest Reserve and once we got the the fork in Waianae Valley Road we both realized that the road we needed to go on was a narrow one way street and our bus driver had scraped a stop sign on her way up that road.  I was so glad I was not driving the bus!  Nonetheless we made it there!  The crew was there to meet us and we were greater with the "hill" that the site coordinator warned us about but it was more like a steep inclined paved road not a little hill.  Our students were already complaining! Also they are warned about poop that might be on the road but of course at least one student needed to step on some....  

Once we arrived at the site that we were going to be working on we had our introductions and I had one of my most excited students whom is from Waianae present our makana to the WMWP crew.  I had gotten them gloves that every group going on the field trip would be giving them gloves as a gift.

We got a brief history of the site and the native plants that have been planted already in the area as well as what Haole Koa and Guinea Grass looked like.  They also explained where we were in the ahapuaha and how this area serves as a firebreak and why firebreaks are important and why making a natural firebreak is much more beneficial than a manmade one.

We broke up into two groups to start our work and I was with the group that was moving Haole Koa tree wood about 30-40 feet from the road to the side of the road so that it could be loaded up into trucks later to be made into mulch to naturally suppress weeds around the native plants.  

So they created a line and started passing the wood from one student to the other like in the picture below.  They worked so hard and I was soo proud of them.  Yes there was some explaining, however none of them quit and they were all pretty surprised to see the piles of wood that they had moved in the end.  (The picture below is only one of 3 piles of wood that they had moved!) 

They were so cute at times, especially when they started naming wood pieces and they wanted to take them home with them...

We switched at about 11:20am after the students had their snack and more water.  Then we went to cut down small Haole Koa trees and Guinea Grass.  I had been terrified of the thought of some students wielding hand saws but I had absolutely no issues with students acting immaturely with their tools!  Another proud teacher moment for me!  I was so proud of them for behaving themselves and acting like young adults. 

One of the piles of Hale Koa trees and Guinea grass that the students cleared.

I was honestly blown away by how much 31 freshmen/sophomores had accomplished in only 2 hours!  I think most of them were surprised as well even though they complained about the heat and having to pee/poop in the forest.  

All in all, I am very glad I planned this field trip, even though it has been extremely hard and I am far from done with 5 more field trips to go and I am the main contact if something goes wrong...  I am very glad that my students mostly enjoyed the field trip.  I think I might do this again next year but I don't know...maybe ask me later like after all the field trips are over... 

Here are some reflection responses.

Blog Post #2

So I took my research question, “How does a new teacher organize and integrate a service learning field trip into their curriculum?”, and searched it in Google Scholar."A model for the development and implementation of field trips as an integral part of the science curriculum" is the first thing that came up and it is similar in nature except that for my research question I am focusing on mathematics curriculum as well as the fact that I am a second year teacher.
 
Everything else on the first few pages were very different than my research question, only taking one aspect of my question and going in a completely different direction.I had arrived at my research question with the help of my advisor, Joe.  At first I really didn't know whether or not I need a research question because I am doing a self-study.  I did look at a bunch of self studies and some did have questions and others seamed to focus on a specific idea or topic but I didn't see an actual research question.  Joe and I came up with our research question fairly easily and quickly since it is basically what I am doing in one simple sentence.  I do have a few questions about my research question that I will pose during my spotlight.  
Is my question specific enough?Should I have a sub question about how how teaming is involving within this service learning field trip?Is teaming important to my research question?

Blog #1 Spring 2016

I don’t pride myself as a writer and writing research papers scare me… This is why I went into math, to avoid writing.  However, I am going to do the very best I can!

I was lucky enough to meet with my mentor Joe on Martin Luther King Day to talk about my Plan B and assignment checklist.  From this meeting, I feel like I have a much better understanding of what I need to do.  I am conducting a self-study

My research question is currently:

“How does a new teacher organize and integrate a service learning field trip into their curriculum?”

Currently I am still working on finalizing details of the field trip and working on hopefully getting free busses.  I am working with Yumi Miyata to try to seamlessly integrate some form of mathematics and data collection for our students to complete at the sites.  Yumi has been in contact with the Pacific Wildfire Exchange to get some ideas for us of activities that our students can do.

Currently we have at most 550 students and 9 teachers going on the field trip (not including other teachers as chaperones at this point).  The majority of the students (380) are in Algebra I with 3 other Algebra II classes and I probability and statistics class.  Also 2 fully self-contained classes of upperclassmen whom are going to have an Aquaponics/hydroponics Integrated Project in 4^th quarter. 

I have been writing in a journal at least once a week for evidence in my self-study.  Which is basically as case study of myself.  I really liked the definition of a case study in the Creswell reading:

“Case studies are a strategy of inquiry in which the researcher explores in depth a program, event, activity, process, or one or more individuals.  Cases are bounded by time and activity, and researchers collect detailed information using a variety of data collection procedures over a sustained period of time (Stake, 1995)”

When Tara first suggested that I do a self-study I had to do some research to completely understand what that meant.  I had also looked at some self-studies that have been done before.

As described in the Creswell reading, I believe that a self-study is qualitative research. 

His explanation here gave me the best understanding of what exactly qualitative research is.

“Qualitative research is a means for exploring and understanding the meaning individuals or groups ascribe to a social or human problem.  The process of research involves emerging questions and procedures, data typically collected in the participant’s setting, data analysis inductively building from particulars to general themes, and the researcher making interpretations of the meaning of the data. (adapted from Creswell, 2007).”

One thing from Creswell’s reading that I found really interesting was biases because Joe had brought this up in our meeting and it was something that I really had not thought about.

“Being objective is an essential aspect of competent inquiry; researchers must examine methods and conclusions for bias.”

The main reason why I wanted to take students from Campbell High School on a service learning experience was because I have had so many great experiences with service learning through the Ethonomathematics and STEM Institute and through this STEMS^2 cohort.  I do understand that the students that participate in this service learning field trip will have a very different experience than any that I have had because they are in a much different time of their lives than I was when I participated in service learning field trips.  Also I understand that each one of their sense of places are unique to them and entirely different than mine.  The enduring understand I hope for them to walk way from this field trip is that of where their water comes from and a better understanding of what a watershed is and their importance.