Science Autobiography

My name is Kayla Hamilton and I was born and raised in Morris, Illinois. It is a small town about thirty minutes south of Joliet. I attended Saratoga Elementary School kindergarten through eighth grade. I do not remember much about my science classes from when I was little. However, the science experiences that I can still remember were all hands on. I can remember planting seeds and documenting their grown in the younger grades. I remember building a boat, volcano, and bridge. The bridge and boat taught us about the displacement of weight and buoyancy. But my all-time favorite was dissecting owl pellets and frogs. I think I loved it so much because at that age almost all the girls in my class were grossed out by that kind of stuff and I liked being different. I think I almost wanted to show the other girls that they didn’t have to worry about getting their hands dirty.

Once I graduated from Saratoga I went to Morris Community High School. This was yet another small school with not much diversity.

To be completely honest my experiences with science in high school were not great. My high school is notoriously known for having a horrible science department. I can honestly say I did not learn a single thing from my sophomore biology teacher. My junior year we learned more from one guest speaker than we did form our actual science teacher all year. This particular teacher was retiring at the end of that year and all we did was sit in silence while he played horrible elevator music and sat at his desk. However, things took a turn towards the better my senior year. I absolutely loved my physics teacher. We did so many hands on projects this year and he allowed us to use our bodies to experience the different forces of physics. I remember building a parachute for an egg/ an air balloon, putting weights on a string to see how it affected its swing, building a tower out of straws/pins, and the infamous chair experiment. I found a new love for science after taking this course and found myself thinking about how/why certain things were taking place.  

This is why my teaching philosophy has a lot to do with hands on learning or mind on learning. I want my students to be actively involved in the learning process asking questions and guiding their own learning along the way. I never want to be the teacher that sits in front of the classroom and lectures the students for the entire period. This is the type of teaching I saw briefly growing up but mostly in high school. Despite some of the interesting teachers I had growing up I still managed to maintain my love for science. I find it very interesting and the experiment so much fun! I truly believe coming form a town where science was not the best subject has made me want to make science exciting and loveable for my students.

The two pictures I included in this post were taken during my physics class. The first was our egg that I am proud to say was the only egg that survived the parachute egg drop. The second is one of my classmates hot air balloons that traveled the farthest out of all the balloons.