About Lux

If there is one thing I have learned about myself, it is my love for science. I enjoy reading, learning, watching, and talking about science. It could be about new discoveries or how nature just exists. I love answering my friend's questions, primarily about chemical, physical, or microbiological concepts since that is my expertise.

One day, it occurred to me that science teachers do this very thing and that I would find great enjoyment in teaching chemistry. It was when I applied for my second bachelor's that I realized that I would have to pick a second field and I find physics so much fun; it was an obvious second specialization.

Granted, there is a lot more to teaching than just answering questions or waxing poetic over content. My goal is to awaken this passion in the next generation. I had always enjoyed science as an elementary/secondary education student, but I never had a plan to make a career out of science and I cannot be the only one. It was not until my time in university that I found how much I enjoyed the sciences and that was too late in my opinion. My goal is help the kids find their passion much sooner than I did.

Between elementary, secondary, and higher education, I have spent literal decades experiencing different teaching styles. I was a Child Left Behind. (I dropped out of high school.) I attended a private Christian school as well as public school. I have also been home schooled. On top of my eclectic education, my parents were foster parents and my biological brother has autism, so I have seen and lived with a gamut of "difficult children."

All of this boils down to my philosophy: that every kid deserves an equal and accessible education in the form that works best for them. For some kids, the one-on-one nature of homeschooling is great while others can benefit from a boarding school and so on. My teaching aims to discover what each kid needs and try to meet that need.

For content, I prefer to use the modeling approach from the American Modeling Teachers Association (AMTA). It seeks to break physics concepts down into easier-to-understand chunks by having students first work with the phenomenon at hand by having them do a lab activity. The students then collect data and create a graph to understand the relationship between two variables. The students derive a mathematical model to explain the relationship. In short, they are doing what Newton did (including calculus even, though they probably won't realize it).

I appreciate trauma-informed practices and socio-emotional learning and wish to include a more holistic approach in teaching. Mental health issues are on the rise, particularly with depression, anxiety, and suicide. Since children spend the most of their day in school, it falls to educators to tackle this issue head on. I myself have struggled with depression and suicide since I was nine, so I am intimately aware of how poor mental health affects productivity in school. It is my aim to meet the student and their family in the middle to develop an appropriate plan that benefits the student.

I became a college student after everything shut down during the COVID-19 pandemic and had a trial-by-fire regarding technology. Most of the sciences require technology in some form or another, but I am equipped to incorporate technology in numerous ways to make my classrooms accessible.

Now that snow days are most likely gone, I am familiar with Zoom and Google Meet. On top of that, Google Jamboards are excellent for collaborative lessons, Quizlet/Kahoot/PearDeck are helpful for quick assessment, and other, various sources for presenting content.

I have set up servers in the past to perform computational chemistry, useful for robust chemical modelling. Currently, I am attempting to tweak Kerbal Space Program, a physics-simulation game, to have a project-based lesson for physics. Other teachers have been able to incorporate Minecraft into their classrooms. The goal is to get students engaged in their lessons and technology makes that all the much easier.

I have also created various supplemental pieces of technology integrations as can be seen on my Project Page as well as a basic How-To for others to incorporate into their classroom. With Web 2.0 and the Internet of Things (IoT), we have a lot of opportunities to make our classrooms and lessons more dynamic and engaging.