FUND FOR TEACHERS
Colorado teachers research tiny island’s role in American Revolutionary War, create documentary to encourage students’ engagement with history and similar student-created films. Teachers represent first of more than 500 preK-12 teachers departing on Fund for Teachers fellowships this summer, seeking new knowledge in 124 countries, every continent, to inspire connected learning.
This week, three teachers waved goodbye to students at Tollgate Elementary School in Aurora, CO, and boarded a plane to become students themselves. The educators are now in the Dutch municipality of St. Eustatia, researching and filming a documentary about the tiny island’s significance to the American Revolutionary War. The teachers hope to increase students’ curiosity in history and inspire similar student-created documentaries using 21st-century skills.
The teachers’ research is funded by a $10,000 grant from Fund for Teachers.
“When thinking about engaging our students with the Revolutionary War, traditional teaching practices and history books limited us in scope and depth,” explained Scott Alverson, team lead. “We’d taught the subject for years and our curriculum needed inspiration.”
That inspiration came in the form of a paragraph buried in a magazine article: “A tiny island in the Caribbean Sea, St. Eustatia, supplied most of the gunpowder to George Washington’s Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War. This obscure island was also the first place on Earth to recognize the independence of the United States of America.” Alverson enlisted the participation of colleagues Kelly Nickell and Kayla Shea to pursue the Fund for Teachers grant last fall.
With the goal of modeling for students how to “think like historians,” the teachers are busy conducting interviews with experts, examining the significance of merchant support that enabled the rebel colonies to win independence, and investigating facts associated with the Andrew Doria sailing vessel. The team concludes their fellowship in Philadelphia, researching at Independance Hall historical ties between America and St. Eustatius. As they go, Alverson and his team are creating a documentary providing concrete visual support of their inquiry, research and discovery. This video will be used as an example for students’ own interactive documentaries when school resumes in August.
“The knowledge and experience we expect to gain on our Fund for Teachers fellowship will be used to demonstrate to students that everyone is a life-long learner, and that education goes far beyond the classroom walls. Our students will better understand what inquiry, craftsmanship, perseverance, and collaboration look like in practice, based on teacher models of research and inquiry-based learning,” said Alverson.
This fellowship enhances teachers’ current American Revolutionary War curriculum that includes creation of a two-voice poem, an interactive timeline created on iPads, and a historical letter. “As we continue implementing 21st century skills with our curriculum, we will incorporate more interactive communications (such as interviewing via Skype), more global awareness, and more in-depth collaborative learning,” explained Alverson. “Students’ documentaries will apply creativity, technology and critical thinking skills, leading to more self-directed learning.”
An article in Education Week’s “Teacher” magazine defined 21st-century skills as certain core competencies such as collaboration, digital literacy, critical thinking, and problem-solving that advocates believe schools need to teach to help students thrive in today’s world. In that article, Center for Teaching Quality’s Founder and CEO Barnett Berry elaborated: “Twenty-first-century learning means that students master content while producing, synthesizing, and evaluating information from a wide variety of subjects and sources with an understanding of and respect for diverse cultures. Students demonstrate the three Rs, but also the three Cs: creativity, communication, and collaboration.”
The Tollgate Elementary School community is following their teachers’ fellowship via a Facebook page they created called The Statia Project.
Alverson, Nickell and Shea join 529 additional teachers awarded more than $2 million to pursue self-designed fellowships this summer. For more information on Fund for Teachers, visit fundforteachers.org.
(Scott and Kayla with guide at St. Eustatia’s Lynch Plantation.)
As we prepare to send 532 teachers off on fellowships to every continent, we’re sharing a few teacher blogs created during previous fellowships.
This blog was created by Karin Stensrud, art teacher at Houston’s Sam Rayburn High School. With her FFT grant, Karin studied the life and work of Picasso and Gaudi in Madrid, Barcelona, and Valencia to and learn traditional Spanish ceramic tile manufacturing from local artists to engage students in creating culturally expressive public artworks.
Her blog also provides her original grant application — great for those considering submitting their own proposal.
Hurricane Sandy provided an unfortunate case study for Jacki Bruce-Yamin’s unit on geo-engineering. For the past year, her fifth grade students at Washington DC’s Thomson Elementary explored strategies for protecting land from storm surges and reclaiming it for agriculture and expanding populations. Without a curriculum to teach the topic, Jacki created her own based on experiential learning in Amsterdam and Venice last summer.
“Last spring, one of my students wanted to learn about geo-engineering and I began to see the creativity that form of science entails. This led me to consider climate change and how the world was facing the challenge. I decided my students needed to be introduced to geo-engineering in order to make informed decisions about how to prepare for rising seas. But my lack of knowledge and text books on the subject was a major hurdle,” explained Jacki.
Together, the class conducted research for Jacki’s Fund for Teachers grant proposal on the topic and anticipated an acceptance letter. In the meantime, they analyzed how windmills worked and marveled at technology developed to protect The Netherlands and Venice from extreme storms. Teacher and students discovered how geo-engineers collaborate globally and share ideas to solve problems associated with climate change.
In June, Jacki’s fellowship extended the class’ scientific inquiry. In Europe, she interviewed the director of Waternet (Amsterdam’s regional water authority), toured windmills used to drain lakes and more modern steam-powered pumping stations, and walked on levees blocking brackish inlets to form fresh water lakes. Venice’s city planning agency and archives provided technical information about modern materials used to combat the destructive effect of water on buildings’ foundations. Conversations with Venetians yielded strong opinions on a costly new project designed to protect the lagoon from storm surge. Each night, Jacki recapped her progress in emails to students and their families.
This spring, a new class of fifth graders study Jacki’s “Rising Seas” unit in preparation for capstone research papers and presentations. Representatives from the Royal Netherlands Embassy spoke to the class about Amsterdam’s water management protocols, and parents participated in an “at home” project by taking students to a city location altered by geo-engineering.
“Science is like a mystery that develops deductive reasoning and encourages the development of higher level thinking skills,” said Jacki. “My fellowship continually challenges students to think beyond a simple six-week unit to explore the topic of water management regionally and globally, from the past, in the present, and into the future.”
English art critic Sir Henry Read believed that “art is pattern informed by sensibility.” For Jennifer Wu, teacher at Capital City Charter School in Washington, DC, that sensibility is math.
“Math and art are taught in modern schools as separate subjects; during classical times they were considered complementary,” explained Jennifer. “Numeracy is often overlooked or used to support other learning disciplines, but I strongly believe that math should have its own identity. I sought in my fellowship opportunities to make connections between numbers and patterns in art.”
Last July on her FFT fellowship, Jennifer explored artwork by Piet Mondrian and M. C. Escher in Dutch museums and public spaces to raise key questions about the roles that symmetry and proportions play in art and math. With her learning and related artifacts, she’s now teaching middle school students a new curriculum on the beauty of art through a mathematical lens. Her goal is to make math more accessible and enjoyable by looking at everyday its applications students haven’t explored.
For one project, students designed Mondrian-inspired artwork and then modeled the area of the multiple rectangles using expanded and factored forms of the distributive property. Students read background information on the artist’s biography and aesthetic style, and mastered vocabulary related to fine arts, geometry and algebra. In the spring, students will explore the tessellation artwork of M.C. Escher in the unit on geometric transformations and symmetry.
“With the advent of the Common Core standards, we are compelled to delve deeper into our mathematic rigor through authentic learning experiences and projects,” said Jennifer. “My fellowship is helping students develop the mathematical skills required by these standards by inspiring an appreciation of math in a deeper and connected way.”
The Ripple Effect of a Marine Biology Fellowship
Lisa Clark taught marine biology at Tuscaloosa County High School with two strikes against her: no working knowledge of the subject and students who lived 200 miles away from Alabama’s nearest sea shore. Along with its lab activities and lesson plans, she inherited the class from a peer who taught it for the previous 30 years. But confidence and knowledge is not passed down. Lisa designed her fellowship to join a Belizean reef research team and return to Northport, AL, with on-the-job training.
“Even though marine biology sounds really interesting and exciting, I was intimidated – and a little scared – to be responsible for students’ learning when I knew nothing,” explained Lisa. “At first, I mined text books and studied preserved specimens for information on marine life. But this second-hand knowledge didn’t give me ownership of the topic.”
Lisa spent two weeks last July on Tom Owens Caye, conducting reef research for an ongoing conservation project headed by the Belizean government. She also learned to identify and survey organisms and established working relationships with renowned marine biologists.
“We know these underwater eco-systems are there, but being able to actively observe and study the anatomy and behavior of its organisms left me wanting to learn more and excited about my new subject matter,” said Lisa.
With a portion of her grant, she purchased organisms indigenous to Belize for a 100-gallon salt water tank where students replicate survey skills Lisa learned. She also purchased web cams to facilitate student conferences with the experts she worked alongside. Building on communication skills and knowledge gained from these Q&A sessions, students now host their own web conferences and field trips, teaching elementary students across the district about marine life.
Lisa joined Fund for Teacher’s first class of Alabama Fellows last year. Her initial reaction to the grant opportunity was skepticism.
“I had never heard of a program that asks teachers, ‘What do you want to do? What do you think would benefit your teaching?’ said Lisa. “Getting to do something that I believed would make me better was so motivating and refreshing.”
A Minority Stake in Science
Growing up in India, Bhavna Rawal conducted experiments in her backyard because minorities, a.k.a. females, weren’t permitted to pursue science in schools. A high school teacher encouraged Bhavna to study engineering at university, which she did – one of two women in graduating her class. After earning Master’s degrees in chemistry and education in Houston, Bhavna assumed her mentor’s mantle of responsibility as a high school teacher encouraging minorities to pursue science.
“It’s important to give my minority students at Quest Early College High School] role models and motivation in the sciences. For example, girls believe it’s not the field for them,” said Bhavna. “I felt the need to provide real-life examples of science because I believe when students see knowledge applied, they connect with the subject and take initiative for their learning.”
Bhavna designed her fellowship to research biodiversity in Costa Rican rain forests, cloud forests, volcanoes and beaches, focusing on national conservation efforts. With new experiences and insights, she established a school-wide Green Club last fall. For one project, members compared and contrasted Costa Rica’s biodiversity with Houston’s during walks down a nearby bayou. Students observed trash severely impairing the ecosystem and created signs they then posted along the waterway discouraging pollution – signs similar to those they saw in Bhavna’s photos from Manuel Antonio National Park. In March, students manned a booth at a nature center, leading children in water and soil analysis to teach the importance of environmental protection. In recognition of their environmental activism, Bhavna’s students received the Green Award from the National Energy Education Development (NEED) organization.
Bhavna also shares her fellowship learning with educators, encouraging them to use Fund for Teachers fellowships to incorporate project-based learning into science curricula. This year, she addressed the Conference for Advancement of Science Teaching, Texas Teachers Association, North American Environmental Educational Association and, in April, speaks to the National Science Teachers Association.
“Introducing students to environmental sciences through my fellowship sparked their interest in pursuing careers as environmental engineers, geologists, GIS mapping and marine science – jobs not readily seen in our community,” said Bhavna. “Exposing students to the application of science in the real world, and encouraging further investigation, impacts their learning, college study and career selections.”
It worked for Bhavna’s teacher.
Geometry Bridges Cultural Divides & State Standards
Geometry is obtuse to teenagers, particularly those emigrating from 12 countries and primarily speaking Spanish, Portuguese and Arabic. Robin Mankel, teacher at Boston’s Brighton High School, was accustomed to student apathy toward math; overcoming additional cultural divisions required a new teaching angle. She designed a fellowship to research examples of geometry in her students’ countries of origin and create a unifying classroom environment.
For three weeks last July, Robin crossed the Iberian Peninsula exploring castles, cathedrals, and World Heritage Sites influenced by the Moors. She daily updated her blog (rmankel.wordpress.com) where students followed the journey.
“The Monastery of Jernoimos contains a beautiful church and cloisters that are an architectural highlight in Lisbon,” she wrote on Day 10 of her fellowship. “When I walked into the cloisters, I was so excited to see the rectangular prisms, cylinders, and cones repeating along the center green space of circles, rectangles and trapezoids. I couldn’t have asked for more direct connections to our 2-D and 3-D units!”
Robin uses her blog, photographs and data when teaching students to “look for and make use of structure” and create “modeling with mathematics,” two benchmarks from the Massachusetts Curriculum Framework for Mathematics. Colleagues in the English department are adapting Robin’s experiences to “develop writing skills and tools for new language learning.” Students will write papers about the people and places associated with Robin’s odyssey, fulfilling an English as a Second Language Common Core standard.
These enhanced courses honor the school’s core values of mutual respect and inclusiveness by celebrating the history and art from Middle Eastern, Cape Verdean, South and Latin American countries representing 93% of her students’ countries of origin. Robin’s work also supports Boston Public Schools’ Superintendent Carol Johnson’s vision of “acknowledging and respecting people with diverse backgrounds, histories and perspectives.”
“During the fellowship I searched for geometric patterns and figures to breathe life into the curriculum and I returned with more than I ever imagined,” said Robin. “The materials are changing the way that I approach the content and, in turn, inspiring my students to look for math in the world around them.”
Heading into National Teacher Day (Tuesday, May 7th), read and appreciate a former teacher shares a few things with “Teachers Everywhere.”
Time of Death: 3,300 BCE
Crime Scene Forensics is a new class at Brooklyn’s School for Democracy and Leadership, but a common practice in the streets surrounding it. When not personally affected by the aftermath of crime, students watch dramatized versions on television. Kelly Houston capitalized on students’ familiarity with forensics to create an upper-level course focusing on biology and science-related careers. Her cadaver of choice is the world’s oldest observable murder victim: Ötzi the Iceman.
On her fellowship last July, Kelly hiked 14 hours along the Italian-Austrian border to the excavation site of Ötzi, a 5,000-year-old mummy. She later explored related artifacts during a private tour of the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology’s Ötzi exhibit in Bolzano, Italy. These experiences inform a new mastery project for Kelly’s forensics students who develop hypotheses about Ötzi’s murder, research artifacts Kelly obtained, refine theories and present findings to the class.
“When students hear about my fellowship and see pictures of me trekking across glaciers through snow up to my hips 10,000 feet above sea level, they think I’m crazy,” said Kelly. “But then they get excited and want to know what Ötzi was doing so far up there. The investigation begins.”
Using Ötzi as a case study helps Kelly engage students who enter her class with many distractions. Most of her students come from single families and work after school to support them. Gang violence is also a prevalent issue, claiming the school’s fourth student by mid-February. According to Kelly, she has to make class interesting to capture students’ attention.
In addition to practicing scientific inquiry, investigating Ötzi’s death helps students see a different side of science – one not limited to goggles and Bunsen burners.
“Because so few minorities are represented in the sciences, I want to show my students that science-related careers aren’t just in laboratories and can be very lucrative,” said Kelly.
Throughout the mastery project, Kelly finds her students observing her as much as they do Ötzi.
“They see in me a teacher continuing my education and learning, not because I have to, but because I’m generally interested in learning about the world,” she said. “They realize learning can be fun and doesn’t always have to be from a textbook.”
(Editor’s note: Scientific tests carried out by forensic scientists show that Ötzi was fatally injured by an arrow and bled to death soon after. Further evidence reveals he was 5’5’’ and 45 years old when he died, that his last meal was red deer and herb bread, and that he was lactose intolerant.)
In the spirit of Earth Day, we share this fantastic video produced by 2012 Fund for Teachers Fellow Kevin Denton and starring his students at Polaris Expeditionary Learning School in Fort Collins, CO.
Last summer, Kevin used his FFT grant to observe micro-lending, well water and poverty issues in Rwanda and create a math/economics unit that demonstrates the meaningful role math can play in solving real world problems. Part of his teaching involved motivating middle school students to conduct a “Walk to the Water” campaign supporting the nonprofit Charity:Water. This literal exercise illustrated to students the lengths to which so many go to secure clean water.
End result: STEM learning, Earth appreciation, 119 gallons retrieved, $4,000 raised.
