Philosophy of Education in a Science Classroom As a science teacher, I employ a wide range of teaching techniques, all of which promote student involvement and engagement. Traditionally, science is often experienced through lecture and lab, and often there is no bridge between the two; students have difficulty relating the lecture to the laboratory activities. I incorporate activity and project based learning to replace the traditional lecture, and use laboratory activities to apply and couple the learning the students are doing through other types of activities. I enjoy creating games as a way of informally assessing student learning (i.e. codon bingo) and projects as formal summative assessments, in contrast to multiple choice tests. For example, at the end of our unit on mitosis and cell division, I had students do a research project and presentation on the cancer of their choice. Students researched the mechanisms of inheritance, symptoms, treatments and demographic information pertaining to their cancer, and created a PowerPoint presentation to teach their classmates. Project based learning and assessments are valuable because they provide an interdisciplinary learning experience, and require students to apply their understanding of content learned in the mitosis unit to a real-world application; virtually all students know someone who has been touched by cancer. Because science is occurring all around us, teaching science through real life and real world applications is more valuable and meaningful to students than teaching science from text book and lecture presentations. In conclusion, I am working to employ more interdisciplinary, hands-on, project based and student centered learning and assessment in my classrooms as the Next Generation Science Standards become adopted by the states. Research has shown that these types of teaching techniques promote student engagement, and therefore promote better and truer learning in students. I believe that the teacher’s role is to facilitate learning activities, and guide students through a learning process, instead of being a dispenser of information. The student’s role in turn is to be the active learner, and is responsible and in control of their own learning experience, rather than simply a recipient of information dispensed by the teacher.