The first thing I noticed about my classes when my spring placement started was the gender gap. In all of my classes, the girls outnumbered the boys. It was especially apparent in my sophomore Biology I class where there were four boys and twenty girls. The boys present in the class made up for their diminutive numbers by making sure they were the loudest ones in the room. They were the students who struggled the most and had the lowest grades when I took over as teacher. It was clear from the start that none of my students liked to take notes, and this was especially true with the guys. I know when I was in high school, and especially college, I always enjoyed the classes that didn't center on taking notes every day, but involved as many hands-on activities as possible. So I tried my hardest to minimize the amount of note-taking in my classes. I usually started off each new topic with a few notes that I would write on the board and go over. Afterwards, I would incorporate one or more activities, usually involving a virtual lab or hands-on activity that I hoped would reinforce the important notes the students were responsible for knowing. My DNA and Genetic Engineering unit plan encompassed a wide variety of topics, and it was easy to utilize a lot of different activities when starting something new, or reviewing something we had already covered. By lessoning the amount of note-taking, and increasing the number of hands-on activities, I was able to keep the attention of the class, and even the boys seemed to enjoy most of the activities, and participated more enthusiastically than I had expected. At the end of the semester, I had the students fill out an anonymous survey of my teaching, and the responses were overwhelmingly positive. Many students commented about the number of hands-on activities I had done with them. At the end of the grading period, the class average was a 92.7%. The lowest grade was a 79%, and was not one of the male students, and the highest grade was 101%. I was very proud of the average and I credit it with using a variety of labs and activities, other than basic note-taking, that kept the attention of my students and had them actively engaged in the lessons. There are so many different types of learners, therefore I can never limit myself to just one teaching style. The more variety I provide my students with when it comes to classroom activities, the better chance I have of reaching as many students as possible.

During my fall internship, I designed a lesson plan based around students working collaboratively to produce an edible cell model. These students didn't have many opportunities to work together in class, and I was initially worried about what the results would be like, but the projects turned out to be amazing. Every student, even the typical "discipline problems" worked hard to create a cell model they could be proud of. And everyone had a blast during this project, including me.

That same semester, I worked together with colleagues from the History, Business, and Agricultural Education programs to create a Thematic Unit that incorporated all of our disciplines. By creating a unit plan that could be used in a science, ag ed, business and history class, more students would be reached and more connections between disciplines would become apparent. This could be very beneficial when a student is having difficulty in one or more subjects, because they will have connections in other subjects to rely on to help them out. The more associations between subjects that a teacher can provide their students, the better chance they have of reaching more learning styles among those students.