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Science and a Sense of Place:
Learning Where We are Located in the World
(July 24-August 4, 2006)

Reflecting on Teaching: What We've Learned so Far-- And Some Guidelines for What We Might Do Next The deepest things to remember? "Everyone is educatable." And none of us can know it all...

What follows? A commitment to A Culture of Revision: "Teachers need to learn to be wrong, and to acknowledge in public, that this is what it is to be human, and what it is to be learning."

What's important in science education?

"We are seekers and users of information, not knowers."

"All teachers are student-teachers."

"To be a good teacher is to be a good learner,
and to lead students to knowledge."

"We need to get students to think of their teachers as their students."

What Doesn't Work: a highly fragmented, living-in-your-own-niche approach

What Works: flexible, substantive interactions among teachers and students:

• go out and talk to one another more!

• focus on small, bottom-up changes

• remember that we are all "on charette"
  (still "in the cart", with our drawings unfinished).

Your Assignment:

• draw up a document outlining a curriculum or
  lesson plan you've imagined for your classroom,
  "doing science with a sense of place"
  
  
• on our last day, perform the first 10 min.
  (or less) of that curriculum, imagined as a mock lesson
  
  
• by September 1, put together a written proposal for educational
  supplies and materials to put that curriculum into practice.

Some Motivating Questions:

• how to have a lesson w/ a goal, while remaining responsive to the kids' questions?
  
  
• how to "find an appropriate scale for your narrative"?
  
  
• how to make the goal general AND specific enough to draw on kids' interests?
  
  
• how to leave open not one, but a number of paths to the goal? (Jeff: "there are multiple ways to get to the material;
  you can discover all sorts of information collateral to your purpose")
• how to think about the differences between being
  • critical and skeptical
  • objective and subjective
  • destructive and productive
  • negative and positive
  • judging and seeing
  • past-based and future-based
  • (how 'bout being responsive/"loopy" in the present?)
  
  
  

"Even if they cannot connect in the social world,
it's my responsibility to make them connect.
They can learn something."

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