This class was not what I expected. For being a BIOL-prefix class, there was not really any biological content. Rather, Dr. Martin-Morris focused on how to teach and the specific issues that are faced in STEM learning environments. Though I do not want to go directly into teaching, the information presented was extremely helpful to my daily life, in which I help and tutor my peers, not to mention that I am now more aware of good and bad teaching practices in my other classes. The social discrepancies in STEM education were also essential for me to know if I am to disseminate scientific knowledge in the future. I think this class made me a better scientist on a social aspect, and I am certainly thankful if I am a more effective communicator coming out of the quarter.
One of our assigned projects was to perform a classroom observation of the same class taught by two different educators and then compare the two teachers' methods and effectiveness. Names in the below document have been censored to preserve anonymity of who I was observing.