This school year is speeding along--why so fast?
Primarily the speed is due to our new environmental education effort with Mass Audubon educators and naturalists. We've already had a professional day, created and taught background lessons, engaged in a watershed model making event, and planned a field study. This is a lot of extra work on top of the busy start-of-school learning experiences and routines.
Of course, I'm very excited about this new learning because it embeds worth state science standards into relevant, meaningful, hands-on learning experiences, experiences that will better prepare the students to live well in their world and take care of that world too. They are gaining essential knowledge and a solid foundation for future science learning.
What has this work involved?
We've engaged in considerable professional learning which has translated into deeper, better lessons. We also had to acquire, organize, and use a number of new materials too which took time to collect, prepare, and use. And there's been a considerable need for communication and collaboration to make this work.
What's next? In the days ahead, we'll do the following:
- continue to support students' science journal work
- field studies and outdoor education on the playground
- student learning about climate change
- students' environmental advocacy, service, and community action projects
It's a deeper, more student centered year--one that I'm excited about and a bit harried too as I try to keep up with it all. The minutes and hours in a day, unfortunately, have not changed so this means trying to rework the schedule to fit it all in.
