Biology for the Teaching Profession – Dr. Binaya Adhikari
Science has never been my thing. I always did well with English classes, always with History classes, Math was okay until I hit Calculus, but I always got confused with science.
I had an amazing Biology teacher in high school, and she was good with relating to us and understanding where we were with the material to teach it to us in a way we would understand and relate. She told some odd stories, but she was my favorite science teacher I ever had.
I did not have this same situation with this biology class.
I felt as if Dr. Adhikari was not understanding that we weren’t science majors, especially that we were also learning different things while learning things from his class. When we were in labs, he acted like we were supposed to understand every piece of equipment and how to do everything correctly, and when I would ask for help, he usually was less help than the people I sat next to and near.
When we were in lectures, he mainly just talked at us and then complained when we copied everything word for word from the slides. We would ask questions, and he would talk about everything else except for the answers to our question. He would always ask after, “Did that answer your question?” and even when we tried to clarify, it wouldn’t always get hit.
Nonetheless, he did still try his best to help us succeed in his class. When we were all doing school from home, he sent messages out frequently explaining different assignments, studying tips for tests, and reminding us about important assignments and projects. He was also helpful when I started to lose my motivation, and he gave me a few extensions for assignments, even a huge project we had due at the end of the semester that I was worried about because of the other missing assignments I had.
I struggled with the material, but I was able to keep some things up due to our larger projects. We had two different teaching assignments where we were able to teach a biology topic from whatever grade or unit we wanted. For my first one, I covered genetics and had to find a hands-on activity to relate to the topic. Here is my demonstration of the lesson I would give!