Samuèle Baca (world languages) and Marnie Bethel(English, world languages) will attend the inaugural Independent Schools Experiential Education Network (ISEEN) Summer Teacher Institute in Santa Fe, NM. President of ISEEN, Jessie Barrie (experiential education), is organizing the conference, intended to help teachers from all academic disciplines bring aspects of experiential education into their classrooms. Samuele and Marnie will attend sessions on service learning geared specifically for English, history, humanities, and world languages teachers, facilitated by a teacher from the American School in London, England.
Karen Temple Beamish (science) was selected by the New Mexico Department of Education to attend a week-long science teacher facilitation training, “Making Sense of Science,” taught by WestEd, a nationally renowned organization whose mission is to “improve education through research, development, and service.” Karen will join 24 colleagues to train an additional 400 teachers statewide — an opportunity, she feels, to improve her understanding of how to make sense of science for both adult and student learners.
Casey Citrin (English) earned a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to participate in Landmarks of American History and Culture Workshops for School Teachers, studying “The Hudson River in the 19th Century and the Modernization of America.” Casey will travel to Mahway, NJ for the NEH workshop in July, and then to Washington, D.C. to participate in the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s Summer Institute, “Teaching the Humanities through Art.”
Rolf Lokke (history) and Mike Nadler (history) will attend the “Teaching For Excellence: The Symposium” conference at the Master’s School in Daub’s Ferry, NY. The conference is designed to bring together teachers from different schools who are engaged in the same kind of work. Some of the workshops Rolf and Mike will attend are “When Teacher Passion Meets Student Choice” and “Exploring Creative Collaboration in Group Projects.” Attendees of the conference will establish a network of teachers who will stay in contact and build on each other’s work. Former Academy faculty Patrick Scanlon, Sean Murphy ’81, and David Dunbar (conference co-director) will also be attending.
George Ovitt (history) received a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute for Teachers and will study “Rethinking the Gilded Age and Progressive Era” at the University of Illinois in Chicago.
Danny Packer (history) will go to Bard College in New York to attend a workshop on “writing and technology.” The workshop will look at how we write, and teach writing, in an environment saturated with technology.
Jennifer Rautman (history) will spend a week at the AP World History Summer Institute in Phoenix, AZ to learn about the changes the College Board is making to the AP exam next year, and what it means for classroom teaching. Jennifer will have the opportunity to network with other AP World History teachers, learn about areas of history she has not studied before, and see connections made around the world and across the 10,000 years covered in AP World History.
Rosalinda Rojas (performing arts) received a scholarship to attend the American Ballet Theatre’s National Training Curriculum in New York City (link to February news story on our web site).
Elliot Wilkinson (science) received a scholarship from the Klingenstein Summer Institute to attend a variety of workshops, seminars, and collaborative exercises in Lawrenceville, NJ. Preparatory assignments include shadowing a student for a day and writing an essay about the pressures of school from the student perspective. This intensive program is especially designed to make teachers more effective leaders in the classroom and throughout the school. Elliot’s tuition, room, and board are included in the scholarship, and he will earn four graduate credits.
Diane Short (English) will attend two week-long workshops this summer. The first is offered by the Institute for Writing and Thinking at Bard College called “Creative Non-Fiction: Telling the Truth.” Diane will explore the teaching of writing through participating in the process herself. She will read renowned authors in the genre, write her own pieces, and work collaboratively to edit and revise, all the while discussing how to bring the techniques back to her own classroom. The second workshop will take place at Boston University School of Education, offered by the Summer Poetry Institute. Designed for teachers, the workshop is based on the Favorite Poem Project. Participants discuss their own experiences with teaching poetry, and develop lessons based on the central tenet of the Favorite Poem Project: “experience of a poem should precede analysis.” Award-winning American poets will present their own works and lead the classes.
Louis Schalk ’94 (visual arts) will participate in an AP Summer Institute at Northwestern University with veteran teacher John Nici, examining the new AP Art History curriculum. The new curriculum includes a more in-depth focus on artwork from beyond the European tradition and emphasizes some different “big idea” themes. Louis will shift his classroom delivery methods from analog slide sets to digital presentations. This will allow for a seamless connection between his interface and the projected image, now that digital technology allows close reads and traditional compare and contrast discussions.
Gayle Wilson (educational technology) is offering an online course for faculty members titled “Classroom Strategies and Longer Blocks of Time,” to reflect and share ideas on how to best design teaching around the Academy’s new schedule. Participants in this course include Samuèle Baca, Florence Goulesque, Sibylle Schlesier, Jim Carroll (world languages), Carol Watson (English), Michal Sommers (visual arts), and Jennifer Rautman (history).
