At this point in my project I have started made some decent headway into writing my paper on lasers. I’ve also noticed something about where I’m finding answers to my essential question: it’s mostly in the lasers research as opposed to the Sustainable Energy class. I think the reason for this is what I am using as my control for comparing my learning this trimester. I took notes last trimester on how I learn in a setting that was fairly familiar, and mostly filled with classes where I learned things through reading about and/or doing hands-on work with a specific concept, and this is fairly similar to the research I was doing. I used a variety of detailed articles to learn about lasers and laser cutting, and then tested some of the principles I learned about in a PhET simulation about lasers. By contrast, due to the learning at home experience the Sustainable Energy class is very different to what I used as my control learning experience, so it’s a little harder for me to compare, especially given that most of what we do in that class is from podcasts and reading related to somewhat specific subjects and scenarios, such as the meltdown at the Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan. However, I am obviously still learning in general from this class, and I’ve also realized something about how I learn in general as opposed to a change in my learning. I have a tendency, when faced with a problem or question, to draw on past knowledge and stubbornly stick with what I know rather than taking a step back and looking for new knowledge and solutions. I think this is in part a result of a discomfort of mine with new and relatively uncertain things, that is to say in relation to things that I already know to work. I think this is an important observation, and absolutely something I want to try to work on for myself going forward.

On the teaching front, I’m getting a lot better at understanding and evaluating students’ work. I’ve gotten a lot of practice at looking very closely at what students are doing with their calculations and reasoning in their homework assignments, and I’ve gotten fairly good at keeping a close eye on their process (i.e. going A to B to C vs. going from A to C directly) and the units they use, which is a somewhat math/science related detail, but important nonetheless given what I am currently teaching. In summary, I am learning things I didn’t fully expect to learn about myself during senior project, it’s still super fun, and even though writing about lasers is significantly less interesting than learning about them, I’m still enjoying formulating my thoughts and findings in a manner coherent with what I’ve learned about teaching and conveying information to others effectively.