Applicant and School Environment

Applicant and School Environment

Ryan S. Swapp

Arizona State University

Applicant and School Environment

Applicant and School Environment

My name is Ryan Swapp, I am a 9th and 10th grade Earth Science, and 11th grade Physics

educator at Arcadia High School. My experience in both the military and through my education

have given me a unique approach over my five years of teaching. Though firm in structure, the

classroom environment is non-traditional in nature. Instead of constant lecturing the students are

asked to actively engage in forming ideas of how earth systems work. This critical thinking has

led to some truly revelatory thinking and helped students not be focused on the memorization of

vocabulary, rather they are engaged in understanding the basics of how Earths systems interact.

Students have shown a receptive nature towards this learning style and we’d like to begin

integrating white board modeling this coming year.

School Environment

Arcadia High School is a perfect opportunity to implement this type of program. Our

school body is 55% Caucasian, 33% Hispanic, and 12% other along with a ratio of 52:48 male to

female. This combined with our 31% low, 35% medium, and 33% high income families give us

immense diversity in demographics when tracking success of this project. Our generous financial

range gives us the opportunity to utilize technologies in ways that many school lack. The use of

Google Classroom, Logger Pro, Khan Academy, and Kahoot give our students advantages that

other schools lack. However, even with these amazing resources our current science proficiency

is 13% below the state average, and currently only get 3% of the student body involved in AP

Science classes (spanning Earth Science, Biology, Chemistry, and Physics) (Great Schools,

2019).

Project Purpose
Applicant and School Environment

At Arcadia our mission is to,” Engage, educate, empower every student, every day.” Our

current methods of instruction do fine in educating young minds, but rarely make students feel

engaged and empowered. This was the purpose of argumentative learning; this method allows

students to engage in the conversation. Giving the students power to guide the conversation to

where they are struggling, and in turn working together to overcome mental blocks that give

them complete understanding. To often we rely on plug and play formulas that students simply

memorize, however they fail to understand why they are plugging in numbers or what the output

is telling them.

Project Setting

Knowing this issue, I would like to concentrate on white board modeling for the next

school year. White board modeling has been around for a couple of decades now, it was

implemented here in the Phoenix metro area at Marcus De Niza High with Malcolm Wells.

White Board modeling is the approach of giving groups of 2-4 students white boards and having

them break down problems. They put any relevant information on the board, for example on

prelabs they can talk about procedures, measurements, or hypothesis they have. They then

present their finding to the classes using the Round Robin method of allowing all member to

speak about their findings. This puts students in charge of the classroom, they ask the questions.

Different groups may make different mistakes and this process allows for refinement of what we

are looking for in the laboratory.

The white boarding can continue after the lab as well. Once data has been retrieved

groups can begin graphing or visually representing the outcomes from their experiments.

Students will then defend their findings, explain deviations, and explain what was happening. At

this point I begin herding the class in the direction we need to go. If we are doing an acceleration
Applicant and School Environment

lab for example, I would start using probing questions like,” what is acceleration?” not looking

for a definition, rather an understanding of what acceleration is truly doing. Our concern in

science should not be to give vocabulary terms that describe these forces and motions. The focus

should be on understanding the workings of the systems around us and how they affect the world

around us.

Data can then be compiled on the class computers using Logger Pro and reports can be

made. Once the report has been completed final white boards can be constructed to summarize

all of what we covered. Discussions over incorrect hypothesis, to few data sets, improper labels,

whether our predictions bore out, and what was occurring in our experiments can then be had.

Much of white board modeling takes the conversation from the sterile class environment and

moves it to the more engaging and empowering laboratory. This would focus approximately 70%

of our attention in the laboratory, with the remaining 30% focusing on lecture and exams. This

hands-on approach gives them physical representations to associate with the book’s terminology.

Conclusion

This style of learning has shown considerable success in multiple trials over the years.

Our state currently ranks 46th in the preparation of our students for college level science classes

(American Institute of Physics, 2011). My hope is that Scottsdale Unified bucks this trend and

begins to take the lead on science education innovation for the state. It is with this in mind that I

approach the 2019-2020 school year. As a former student in the Arizona high school education

system I know the talent pool is out there, now it falls on the education system to provide them

the best opportunity to flourish.

Applicant and School Environment

References
American Institute of Physics. (2011, July 7). Science Education: Top and Bottom States. Retrieved from
Live Science: https://www.livescience.com/14953-states-add.html

Great Schools. (2019, March 13). Arcadia High School. Retrieved from Great Schools:
https://www.greatschools.org/arizona/phoenix/399-Arcadia-High-
School/#Race_ethnicity*Test_scores*Science