I chose to take CPSS240 and go to College Park Academy as my practicum site because I heard about "the robotics class," as it's colloquially referred to, during last year's Academic Showcase when I interviewed an SGC student. Honestly, just remembering what previous students had told me about the practicum helped me a lot when picking a practicum project.
Tasks PerformedAt College Park Academy, other UMD students and I taught students one-on-one to build and program robots. We used a student-centric approach where students were able tochoose what topics they were most interested in, and this helped maintain student interest.
Relation to ScienceI learned a lot about STEM education from teaching it. For one, I learned that you can't really force people to learn; they have to be independently motivated to learn new things and then use those new things to tackle challenging projects. I also gained a lot of respect for teachers, who have to put up with these kids on a daily basis and have to equip them with the skills needed to succeed in life as a full-time job.
Beyond Science & the FutureThis semester I TAed for this course and learned more about the behind-the-scenes action. As TAs we were tasked with taking attendance, attending weekly meetings, and taking the students to the schools, which I had a student help me with because I don't have a driver's license yet. I would not have gotten the opportunity to TA if I hadn't taken the course in the previous semester.
While I haven't made any conclusive modifications to my future plans, I do plan to see if there are more teaching and service-based courses here at UMD. I feel like community service serves as a nice reprieve from my usually stressful college career, and it's a nice way of giving back to the community as well.
Last modified on Vim in command line, god I hate my life