Interviewer: What type of networking best work for you?

Teacher 1: Face to face followed by email. For example, with email, if you have the resource in front of you, you can just shoot an email. But face to face, you open up your computer and put it on my flash drive, and I popped it in my computer and loaded it up, but she also emailed me, so now I can email her and ask her questions about it because I wont see her again till October. So I guess I would rank face to face then email.

Teacher 2: I always prefer face to face because you get the nuances that people don’t think to type out or don’t want to type out. Not only that but face to face when it’s done it’s done, but if it’s through email, it takes longer to get to the final place you want to be.

Teacher 3: I think for science we are always looking for hands on activities. The advantage of face to face is the ability to see what other teachers are doing and you can see how a lesson is carried out. You can see if it works all the time, which most of the time it doesn’t. But this teacher that you are observing or talking to in person is more experienced and has had more trials and error with a particular lesson, can guide you. This teacher can tell you what to expect and what to do in case students are not responding to the lesson. It brings a depth of knowledge you wouldn’t get form email or a website.

Interviewer: Do web sites work?

Teacher 1: Yes websites can work. If the website is reliable and makes available curriculum that one can take and implement with little effort, it’s a good thing. For example, one website provided some animation on how drugs affect the brain, I was able to adopt and show this animation to my kids without too much work. Also my school has a subscription to Safari Montague, which is a collection of movies or videos from BBC or National Geographic. There are ten or twenty thousand videos to choose from. For example, I can search rock cycle and it will bring up all the videos along with its study guides, quizzes and vocabulary. It is a really great resource for our students because they are used to that constant stimuli that is always going in, so they can see and hear how it works. As opposed to me just standing up there saying blah blah blah or reading a book. Technology is an integral part of my class.

Interviewer: What is it that you look for in a website. What captures your attention? What does a website need to have?

Teacher 4: Grade-level appropriateness. It has to be grade level. There are lots of websites that can be great for little kids but not middle school age kids or vise versa. Too often someone will come into your class and say that what you are teaching is too young or too old for your students.

Teacher 5: User friendliness. In other words, is it easily to get to? Is it clear? What’s on it? Do you have to follow a path or is it just there for you? There are thousands of websites and if I have to spend a lot of time extracting information, then it starts taking away from something else I could be doing. So if the website offers something that I need, something that is right there, something quick and clear cut then it’s a website worth saving.

Teacher 6: It must be visually appealing. I don’t want the website to look like it hasn’t been updated since the advent of the internet, because if I pull it up on the board the kids are going to be like what is that? Kids are going to ask isn’t there something more current?

Teacher 1: A website should be accountable. The resources and lesson plans must be based on research evidence. If they have researched it then I want some efficacy. I want lesson plans that have been tested and include resources and where it has been cited. I want to know what kind of outcomes to expect from the lesson plan. I don’t want to use something that doesn’t work. I want some backing to some curriculum or lesson indicating that it works. You can’t just use Wikipedia.

Teacher 2: When we were at UC Davis we had professors of neuroscience, and they have something called smart site, where the professors can post Powerpoint presentations online before their lecture. So students must already have then on their laptops during class. Also, professors podcast their lectures and update their lecture notes after class. This system is something that I would like to use and could take back to my classes. I can take it back to class on a relevant subject and play part of a lecture from an UC professor for my students. I don’t have to worry about writing feverous notes. I can access it online.

Interviewer: Can you describe a situation where you and other educators engaged in sharing information? What did you enjoy the most about this interaction and how was it meaningful to you?

Teacher 7: I think the best example of a situation was during our team science GK12 grant, because it was focused on inquiry. Each teacher brought in inquiry activities and we worked on them together, we tried them on each other to see the activities worked, we searched for information on line and then sat down as a group and discussed them. We engaged as colleagues from different academic disciplines to break down the workings of a lesson plan and put a lot of effort at really understanding what was happening. This collaboration was consistent for 4 years. You can’t be shy about contacting other teachers and request to collaborate on projects.

Interviewer: Would you say that a lot of this communication happens with in your school?

Teacher 1: I think that depends on the level of PD (professional development) and workshops you attend. For example, as part of our PD, and continue working together about five times a year as a part of the PD follow up. It would be great because you have someone who says I just did this in my class and if it worked, I would ask to use that lesson plan. We have the opportunity to share information during our Friday meetings. So, it really just depends on the relationships you have with other teachers. If you are isolated you will stay that way.

Teacher 3: I teach math, my whole family does, we talk about math quite a bit. My son has a internship at delta. He showed me a way one of his favorite teachers factored polynomials and I have been teaching it that way ever since. I think a lot of teachers know a lot of teachers form other places.  You end up networking

Teacher 2: I think it depend on the site your at, if you are looking to enhance your curriculum but can’t find someone to collaborate with or learn from others at your site, then you have to network outside your school.

Interviewer: In a survey, a lot of teachers answered somewhat knowledgeable to this question: “How knowledgeable are you about health science curriculum?” What are you thoughts on this?

Teacher 5: I think it depends on what you are asking us to know. For example, can I tell you about biology and how that relates to health science? Yes. Can I tell you about chemistry and tell you how that relates to health science? Yes. Can I tell you exactly what a nurse has to know or what a physical therapist has to know? Probably not. I can tie some of those work-related concepts into my curriculum, but also I must be able to tell my students what they need to know to succeed in school.

Teacher 2: I think part of it has to do with what is your definition on what works for your students? When you are knowledgeable about the career, you can easily incorporate that into your class. The challenge is how is what you are learning applicable to math and still be useful in the health science field.

Teacher 7: We must be able to share information and collaborate with teachers from schools that have been doing this for a long time, so we don’t have to reinvent the wheel. We have the mentors and resources available. Our mentor buddy is a resource for us to go to. Being apart of HOSA and seeing how that works and seeing how theses kids have taken everything we wanted them to know and using it. And to see that what we taught them in the classroom made them ready to join the workforce right out of high school really brought this home for me. So I do know about health science curriculum and I have applied it, maybe not throughout. I think part of this team has really catapulted my confidence as far as adding health science curriculum into my classroom.
Interviewer: I think the question was getting towards exactly what you just said. How much has your knowledge changed.

Teacher 1: What I heard in your question was how much knowledge the kids are going to get from our program. And are they going to know exactly what they are getting into in regards to what careers they are going for. And I think the answer is yes, I think our kids will know exactly what they are getting into. Having colleagues as resources, I think we will be able to give students a very good idea of what career area of health they are getting into. I’ve had students come and ask me about being a nurse, and they will just say ‘I think I will just become a physician’s assistant.’ And I say ‘wait a minute, let’s find out exactly what it is you will be doing as physician assistant before you make that decision verses being a RN.’

Teacher 4: I think with the 7th and 8th grade we’ve had teachers create a curriculum road map for students, even though that isn’t popular anymore. Looking at the curriculum calendar we can see exactly what CTE standards would fit so we can get relevancy. At one time we can see biology teaching cell structure and tissues and body structure and social studies is teaching the beginning of government and the structures that government has. So that fits in with CTE standards because we can be talking about what kind of structures does health care need. And then you have students map a particular career area with the courses they’ll need to have in order to support their career interests or skills that they’ll need for a job.

Teacher 7: I think exposure is the key word. Even though we try to align the hospital visits with the curriculum if it is heart month and we cant get the cardiologist, we go on to plan b. we can bring in a radiologist and then after we can discuss the vocabulary now we can tie in the curriculum. It doesn’t have to always fit perfectly with the curriculum. No matter whom we bring out, it is exposure. There are always things we can tie it in to the curriculum.
Thank you.

– This focus group was conducted on July 1st, 2009 with Health Science Educators