Life/Science 101: So, You Think You Can Teach Biology!

What, indeed, makes me think I can teach Biology? After all, I've never taught it before. My college background is in electrical engineering without a single Biology course disturbing my transcript. Oh, wait, two years ago, I did participate in a MOOC from MIT that was focused on the biochemistry of DNA, RNA, and proteins. But, is that enough? Surely, one must have more that that!!!

Well, maybe . . .  but I remain absolutely confident that this will be a great year for my students and me. One way to evaluate the likelihood of success in a venture is to do a Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats (SWOT) matrix. One lists as many of these factors as possible, then tries to build off the positives and address the negatives. I think I had internally sensed that there were a lot of positives but, until now, I had never quite formally expressed them.

So, here's my SWOT analysis of the venture:

STRENGTHS 20+ years of teaching experience at the secondary level personally fully “NGSS-ready” was deeply involved in the overhaul of the curriculum (making it align with NGSS) supportive department chair supportive administrators creative and committed colleagues common planning time with other Bio teacher summer time available for Professional Development life-long interest and reading in the area of evolutions and natural selection comfort with “deep time” from Astronomy instruction comfort with “controversial” topics from Astronomy instruction

WEAKNESSES relatively shallow depth of knowledge in the content area still working on the “Big Picture,” especially in the first unit

OPPORTUNITIES possible influence on analysis of life science investigations - more computational?? significant personal development as I learn Bio concepts at deeper levels, that can impact my instruction to the benefit of students - I’ll identify their struggle with content

THREATS school year “busy-ness” may constrain collaboration time with Bio colleague lots of chances to mangle the endless Bio vocabulary - will students lose faith?

Quick analysis:

1) There are, indeed, a lot of strengths and some cool opportunities.

2) The weaknesses are not hard to address . . .  I'm getting to be best buddies with ol' Sal Khan this summer, getting some great instruction in the areas of cell regulation, cell respiration, photosynthesis, specialized cell functions, etc. In terms of the "Big Picture," some time with my colleagues can address that quite easily.

3) At the risk of sounding like Yogi Berra ("They have deep depth"), those strengths are really strong! Time, support, interest, and experience are tremendous factors and quite possibly the ones I had internally accounted for!

Now, as a science teacher and long-time reader and fan of Skeptic and the Skeptical Inquirer, I know how capable we all are of self-delusion. But I'm hoping that this matrix demonstrates why I've got a good chance to be successful. At the very least, it should be an interesting matrix to return to throughout the year: What threats did I not anticipate? What weaknesses lurked hidden from view until too late? What strengths were over-stated?

If you think of generic or specific factors that I may have overlooked, please comment!