I want students to be able to learn and appreciate the complexity which is our nervous system. I want to foster a passion for all things neuroscience. I want students to conduct research in neuroscience so they can focus on one area and have top universities see their research. Research that they were able to accomplish at a high school without high tech labs or vast resources. I want students to get to places that I could never imagine. I want them to do all this with their inquiry guiding them in groups towards a common goal. I want them to set goals and learn all the intangibles that research provides via experience. I want to make them well rounded in their educational experiences so they can be productive 21 century learners. …show more content…
I want them to have direct ownership over their learning. I want the students to say, "I feel like learning about memory, let's make an experiment to test a theory". Students need to realize that a book and teacher can only guide in the learning experience, but the power comes from within to have it make sense for their life.
Teachers will find that "teaching to the test" for the whole year is not a necessity. Students can be successful in state mandated end of course exams if they are taught how to think, not what to think. Teachers must lose their fear of what will other teachers think of my new practices or what if they don't do well on the exam because I did not go specifically over an objective 10 times. I want teachers to ultimately trust that students can be responsible for their own leaning.
In order for me to get started, I need to do more research on PBL, how students find meaning in what they learn and student guided learning. After this I need to look at what my focus will encompass, such as how long will this experiment take place, what parameters are required in PBL and how can meaning be assessed? I also need a baseline this first semester with traditional teaching and PBL second