Autobiography

My name is Alicia Lehmann. I was born and raised in Glen Ellyn, IL, a northwest suburb of Chicago. I have never moved in my life, except to go away to college. Science has never been a large part of my life. As a child, I was never very interested in it. The only time that I was interested, was when the class would do an experiment. There is not a lot that I remember about science as a child, except that we did things with plants and the solar system. As I got older, science became even more unappealing to me. When I reached middle school, lab groups were a time to sort of do the experiment and mostly talk with your friends. Talking with my friends was definitely the part I enjoyed most. When I got to high school, science became more difficult for me. I grasped what we were suppose to do for experiments but I wasn't understanding the formulas and other variables involved. This only frustrated me and turned me away from science more. I remember doing some dissections, which were definitely not for me. There were many basic experiments that we also did that were not very exciting for me either. In high school I had pretty mediocre science teachers. Except for my senior year, I opted to take ecology instead of physics. My teacher, Ms. Antonelli, was one of the best teachers I have ever had. She showed passion and dedication to her field of science. She made me more passionate about ecology. I found myself recycling, reminding friends to not litter, saving energy when possible, and more. Ms.Antonelli was a fantastic teacher that truly made me enjoy Ecology. As for the other sciences, I'm still not too sold.

As I try to remember my past with science, I realized how difficult it is. The strongest memories I have of science are of when I was in middle school and older. I barely remember anything about science in elementary school. This may be because it is a memory that happened further in the past or because we didn't do that much science in elementary. Honestly, I believe that the reason is a mixture of both. As a future teacher, I definitely plan to incorporate science into everyday lessons. As we spoke about in class, science can be incorporated to many different subjects instead of having to set aside time just for science in your day. School days are jam packed with different curriculum, activities, and specials. Teachers struggle to fit everything that they need to into each day, that is why science and social studies get pushed to being the last priority. I do not want this to be the case in my classroom one day. I would like to have science everyday and not have it be the last thing I worry about. Majority of the subjects in an everyday classroom can be brought together and taught at the same time. Reading can incorporate science and social studies, as can writing. I plan to have at least a little bit of science in my everyday curriculum.

My cultural upbringing did not have a large impact on my attitude about science and learning science in my opinion. I had a very average upbringing. I have one older sister and two parents, a mother and father. My parents are the type of parents that encourage me to do whatever I enjoy. They are very supportive. I went to a school in a predominantly Caucasian school, but there was a lot of diversity at the same time. Both my middle school and high school had many different cultures, races, and socioeconomic statuses. Something that I previously mentioned that did affect my attitude towards science was my teachers. I talked about my positive experience with a science teacher, but there is also a negative one. My sophomore year, I had a biology teacher who was not a very nice guy. He was the type of teacher who favored students that were in athletics or that he just liked in general. This was a teacher who turned me away from science. It's a shame that it was because of a teachers personality that affected my feelings towards science.

As a college student, I started off at Western Illinois University. I was only there for a year. WIU was not the school for me, it was a bit rural for my taste. While I was there though, I took a biology class. I did not get a whole lot from this course. My teacher was very intelligent and seemed passionate about the subject but all homework and tests were online. Since everything was online, I was not retaining any information because I was just using my notes and the textbook to complete the work. After leaving WIU, I came to Illinois State University. At both universities, I have been in Early Childhood Education as a major. Little children have always been fun and exciting for me. I have always enjoyed being around little kids. For as long as I can remember, I've wanted to be a teacher. For a long time I wanted to teach preschool. After being in a preschool clinical setting, I quickly realized I did not want to teach preschool. Last summer (summer 2013) I realized that I loved working with first and second graders. I learned this by being a day camp counselor for children ages kindergarden to second grade. I fell in love with being with this age group.

My background will definitely influence my future teaching. For my clinical placements I have been able to be in a very diverse settings. I have worked with infants, toddlers, preschool, kindergarden, and now third grade. Outside of my clinical experiences I have worked in a two-year-old day care room, toddler room, and with kindergarden through second graders as I stated above. Since I have had the privilege to work with such a wide range of ages, races, ethnicities, and socioeconomic statuses, I would say that I have gotten a lot of diverse experience. I have worked in a classroom in which 95% of the students lived in poverty. That classroom had at least five different ethnicities in it. The clinical setting I am placed in now seems middle class or well off. Since I have had the opportunity to experience such a variety of classroom setting where the children have come from all types of different homes, I think this will influence my future teaching. Although I do not come from a very diverse background, my experiences have taught me a lot more about diversity.

Here's a picture of my kids at camp during thursday Zumba!