Jamie Esler
Needs Assessment – Final Draft - 2013
"Drumlin Formations in Iceland"
Classroom Vision
The best and most profound days I that I spend with my students happen when my
only role is to facilitate a learning environment where they are able to pursue their
own inquiries. However, amidst the increasing role of state standardized test and
district final exam scores in assessing student achievement, providing my students
with the inquiry-based environment can often times be a challenge. My PolarTREC
experience now helps me balance these two competing learning environments,
preparing my students to succeed in each.
My personal vision of the 'perfect classroom' allows my students to maintain
portfolios of continued research and hands-on laboratory investigations based on
central themes or units embedded within the course curriculum. This would allow
me to place their choice in how to explore the curriculum learning objectives at the
top of my priority list. I envision students tackling pertinent vocabulary and content
individually at home, and utilizing our class time to clarify any misconceptions
before applying this knowledge-level information in projects and laboratory
activities that challenge students to synthesize relevant real-world products,
evaluate results in skeptical and constructive dialogue with peers, and broadcast it
all on a national and global scale to other students around the world using internetbased technology.
In reality, my creation of this kind of learning environment is hindered by lack of
proper funding for science education in Idaho, class sizes that seem to get larger and
larger each year, and populations of students that can manage to navigate their way
through a multiple-choice test, but are absolutely frightened by the idea of an
inquiry-based or project-based laboratory activity.
By utilizing my PolarTREC experience, one of these obstacles will now be much
easier for me to overcome. Sharing this experience with my students through the
Virtual Base Camp and Ask the Team Forum will give them a tangible connection
with 'real science' and 'real scientists', thereby helping them to understand the
importance of learning how to pursue their own curiosities while still mastering the
knowledge-level information and vocabulary.
I am now utilizing my PolarTREC experience and lesson plans show students firsthand the value of scientific literacy and how they too can participate in the scientific
enterprise; both as a student and maybe even as a scientist themselves. Whether it's
9th/10th grade Physical Science or my 11th/12th Environmental Science, my entire
PolarTREC experience has demonstrated enormous capacity to provide my students
with an engaging and meaningful context for mastering the content of their science
curriculum.
Student Needs
My students need to develop in the following areas, and as a result of my PolarTREC
experience, will be more equipped to be able to:
 Perceive the scientific method and scientific fieldwork as a dynamic and fluid
system of acquiring knowledge about the natural world, and evaluate the
importance of developing an objective and controlled methodology for data
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collection/processing, and presentation/communication of results and
conclusions.
Identify the Earth as a large system of biotic and abiotic processes that
function together as a wholesome unit. Students are taught science content
in packaged courses (Biology, Physics, Chemistry, etc.), and have difficulty
seeing the role of each branch of the natural science in successfully
completing a research project. Polar Sciences are the best example I am
aware of for teaching students the highly valuable interdependent
relationship amongst the branches of natural science, and that Earth is best
understood through the systems approach.
Analyze the growing body of scientific data indicating changes in global
surface temperatures, climatic and oceanographic conditions, and how
human societies are able to mitigate or adapt to these changes.
Appreciate the sensitivity of the Polar Regions to increased global surface
temperatures (with specific regard to climate feedback mechanisms and
Arctic/Antarctic ecological health and sustainability).
Use regional climatic and hydrologic observations and data to identify the
effects of warming global surface temperatures on ecological health and
human societies of the Northwest Rocky Mountains.
Changing My Teaching Method
My instructional methods to develop in the following areas, and as a result of my
PolarTREC experience, I am now more equipped to be able to:
 Allow my students more opportunities to investigate the lives of real
scientists, and explore the many different types of career opportunities
within the scientific enterprise.
 Include more opportunities for my students to see the interconnectedness of
the branches of natural sciences, and viewing Earth as a system. This could
be done in challenging students to identify connections or implications of
classroom laboratory results to other branches of natural science and/or
Earth systems.
 Provide my students more consistent opportunities and exposure to use the
excellent set of Vernier software and probeware I have in m classroom.
What I Expect to Learn
As a result of my experiences as a PolarTREC Teacher, I expect to continue to learn:
 How scientists deal with adversity in the field during data collection. As an
educator, I constantly need to be flexible with my plans and management of
the classroom. I am excited to learn how the same need for flexibility
materializes for polar scientists in remote locations. Learning more about
this will also help me meet some of the needs of my students (as identified
earlier in this assessment) and help them deal with adversity and become
more flexible during their own laboratory work in class.
 How to communicate and teach science to a more open and general audience.
As this is a summer expedition, I expect that much of my interactions through
the Virtual Base Camp will be with adult peers and community members. I
am most accustomed to teaching science to a very specific age group (13-18),
and I look forward to acquiring new communication skills for a different
audience of followers.
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Much more about glacial mechanics, and how landforms like drumlins are
formed at geology work the basal interface of glaciers. I majored in geology
for my BS and studied quite a bit about glacial geomorphology and
glaciology. Much of my work focused on alpine glaciations, however, with
less of an emphasis on continental ice sheets. My work in Iceland this
summer with the team will be that of the latter, and I look forward to
learning more about continental ice sheet behaviors and mechanics.
Concepts to Teach Better/Differently
As a result of my PolarTREC experiences, I would like to continue to become more
effective at:
 Teaching the Scientific Method and how to conduct a controlled experiment.
I would like to use more real-world examples and scenarios as models for
students to reference while learning each step. I am in need of better ways to
teach this concept throughout my entire curriculum in these ways.
 Including performance tasks and laboratory-based questions/problems in
my assessments of student progress and achievement. Our state's recent
adoption of the Common Core State Standards will work perfect with my
PolarTREC experiences to help me develop in this regard.
 Teaching the "Physical/Chemical Properties and Changes" unit in my
Physical Science class with better real-world contexts. Since my
involvement with PolarTREC began, I am quite excited to teach this unit
again and use the Polar Regions as the context for this unit.
Equity for All Students
Here in North Idaho, there is very little ethnic diversity amongst the students I
teach, with a very high amount of economic diversity. My PolarTREC experience will
now allow me to show students with lower socio-economic status that a career in
science is possible for anybody.
I also passionately believe in teaching students that careers in science are held by
both men and women. I make great efforts in my classroom to teach students that
scientists can literally be anyone. I keep a poster in my classroom of famous women
in science, actively promote the "Women in Science Day" at University of Idaho, and
do a drawing lesson on this topic the very the first day of my 9th grade Physical
Science class. The activity is a drawing exercise where I give students 3 minutes to
draw a picture/sketch of a scientist. Year after year, the most common drawing
created is that of a white male in a white lab coat with lots of glassware surrounding
him. I ask students to hold their drawing up to show the entire class and then ask
students to identify the common theme in the drawings; they usually pick-up on the
lack of diversity in their drawings rather quickly. I then bring up a slide on the
projector that is a collage of pictures of scientists from all around the world: men,
women, different ethnicities, etc. and ask students to re-evaluate their drawings. I
ask the, "Why did you draw what you drew?"
The results open up a wonderful dialogue about who and what 'real scientists' are,
and PolarTREC is going to provide me an excellent opportunity to now include
photos, interviews, and stories for my students of scientists I met and worked with
from all sorts of ethnic backgrounds and genders at the closing of the drawing
activity.