About me and meeting the needs of learners

About me:

My name is Eric Wendland, and I've been teaching for 7 years, the last 5 at a private Catholic high school.  I love using new technology and learning new and exciting ways to present my material.





My Classroom

I would say I am quite easy going as a teacher goes.  My classes tend to be very dynamic, where students are always thinking and working on making things.  From the first day I try to build relationships with my students as I find that students are much more invested in their work when they feel the teacher is supportive of them.  I focus on project based learning in my classrooms, which helps maintain a fun, active atmosphere and keeps the students so busy that class time tends to fly by.

I have always been an active, global, intuitive, and visual learner, and this definitely comes out in my teaching style.  I emphasize collaborative work in my classrooms, and we focus on how things work rather than understanding every detail about them.  We watch plenty of video, make our own visual aids, perform laboratories and create things that explain what we are learning.  I like to teach my students skills that help them learn in every class - not just mine - and things that will benefit them down the road when they go to college.  In short, I try to make them learners, not just students that remember things for a test.  I have found that maintaining a light atmosphere and exuding a positive personality,  I build very positive relationships with my students which results in getting high quality work from them.

Meeting the needs of all learners

I teach Marine Biology, which is a mixed class at my school.  I tend to have a very wide range of learners and aptitudes.  I get the sophomores who might not be quite ready for chemistry yet, and I also get the seniors who may be taking other AP level courses and want to take an elective science to round out their curriculum.  On top of this, the older students  are very aware of how they learn things while the sophomores are still trying to figure things out.  At first, keeping things meaningful for my high level students and still making the information accessible to my sophomores was challenging to say the least, but after a few years I've found a few strategies that help me meet the needs of as many students as I can.

I would say that the most effective strategy I have found to reach all learners is by monitoring how I group students for the projects we create.  I like to try different groupings based on the type of the project, how difficult it is, and how easily it can be differentiated.  When the project is more challenging, I tend to use homogeneous groupings more often than mixed groups.  This allows me to alter the project as needed to challenge high level student groups, or dial the difficulty back a bit for groups that may be struggling.  It also allows me to do small group instruction for the students who will benefit from it while the ones that are independent and ready to go can do their thing.  For projects that aren't as challenging and are accessible to most students, I will mix the students up a bit.  I find that the higher level students benefit from helping their peers, while the students who struggle benefit by learning from other students rather than from me all the time.

Another strategy I use is to give students options when they are completing projects.  Rather than having all students turn in a single type of product, I will allow them some latitude in showing their understanding of the material.  For example, they might be creating some media to explain an issue that affects our oceans.  They can explain this issue through a video, a podcast, by creating promotional materials, an infographic, and so on.  I find that the students relax more when they feel they can explain things in their own way, and as a result I get some very high quality products from them.