Am I able to check in with which each of my students with enough regularity that I know what their needs are? And more importantly, are my students able to reflect upon and articulate their needs themselves? Up until recently I’ve relied upon assessing their work at certain points in a project or class time check-ins whenever possible to keep each of my students’ needs on my radar. For the student who is more of a quiet learner and less comfortable interacting and expressing themselves it is often a bit of a puzzle for me to determine their needs. Continue reading Do We Know What Our Students’ Needs Are?
Category Archives: Professional Development
When the familiar becomes this sort of alien world
At our first divisional faculty meeting, we used some provocative insights from Warren Berger‘s A More Beautiful Question to examine some of our familiar routines and practices through the lens of our important summer learning experiences. We wondered together about how might these powerful experiences reframe how we look at the familiar so as to make it seem new again and open for inquiry. Continue reading When the familiar becomes this sort of alien world
Designing for Innovation
What do you get when you bring together faculty teams from each division and frame mission-focused inquiry around a design thinking framework? You get our first successful Innovation Institute. Over a five-day period this summer, a diverse group of faculty came together to explore the concept of time and how it impacts teaching and learning at LREI. With facilitation by designers from the School of Visual Arts Design for Social Innovation program (@InquiringMonica and @playlabinc), the participants explored how a design thinking mindset can be used to forward our mission through the cultivation of empathy connected to purposeful action. Within in this framework, participants identified questions connected to problems whose solution will have a positive institutional impact on our work and culture. Continue reading Designing for Innovation
Big Time: Prototype 1 (a video)
As part of the first Innovation Institute, our middle school cohort consisting of Susannah, Sherezada, Dave and Matt took on the challenge designing the weekly block of time that will be designated for individual student exploration. Our initial prototyping dealt with testing out the process through which students will determine their topic of exploration. We brought in 3 middle school students to test our initial ideas. Here is a video recap:
You can view our slide show presentation here.
Our Learning Community
To be an LREI teacher is to be immersed in the planning for, thinking about, and reflecting on one’s own teaching practice. This happens individually and in collaboration with colleagues. It happens within the LREI community and beyond at conferences, workshops and school visits and through each teacher’s professional learning network. Continue reading Our Learning Community