Innovative Education in Vermont
Exploring innovative, personalized, student-centered school change
We talk with legendary awesome stats guy Mark Olofson — now Dr. Legendary Awesome Stats Guy Mark Olofson — about his research into adverse childhood events and school performance.
It’s some pretty important stuff, about how the intersecting traumas that affect students have some long-reaching consequences.
Continue reading “How do adverse childhood events affect student performance?”
With July comes the “Dog Days” of summer – named due to their association with Sirius, the Dog Star. Sirius is the (second) brightest star in the sky, and Voyager 2 will get within 5 light years of it as long as nothing bad happens for the next 296,000 years. Anyway, centuries ago, Sirius would rise with the sun during July and August, thus associating these hot days with canines. Fun facts to share!
That’s about all the science in this post…
Continue reading “Pushing my thinking with summer reading”
A couple of weeks ago, Lucie deLaBruere of Learning with Lucie shared a post considering how we can embrace the emerging interest in Makerspace learning to move “Beyond Bling.” This post ignited my thinking about this type of learning in a number of different ways. I thought I’d take today to explore some of those thoughts in a commentary about the ideas in the post. If you haven’t read it yet, I encourage you to go back and check it out. Once you have done that, I think you might be interested in further considerations of complex problems, project-based learning, and constructionism as a learning philosophy. Continue reading “Making even more of “Beyond Bling””
Last week we looked at the sugaring operation at Essex Middle School. The students at the Edge Academy built a sugar house a few years ago, and now they produce maple syrup for their school every year. Math teacher Phil Young has intertwined the project with his mathematics curriculum, and students use iPads to support their work. By sugaring, students are engaging in the culture of their community in an authentic way. Today, I would like to share with you how these students have taken the project a step further. Not only have they learned how a sugaring operation works, they have shared that knowledge with local elementary students. This spring, The Edge invited two different classes of third graders out to the sugar house. The younger students engaged with sugaring and the math involved; the Edge students instructed them along the way, building their learning and community in the process. Continue reading “Sugaring and the community part 2: Students become teachers”
Early spring is sugaring season in Vermont. We produce the lion’s share of the domestic output of maple syrup, and we’re pretty proud of it. The process of tapping trees, collecting sap, and boiling it down has many connections to STEM education. The students and teachers of the Edge team at Essex Middle School built their own sugar house a few years ago, and now part of their curriculum is to make syrup while the sap flows. Math teacher Phil Young has integrated the process into his curriculum, and students use technology to support their work. Today, with Phil’s permission, I’d like to share some of those activities, and also consider how this is a different dimension to what it means to have connections to the community. Continue reading “Sugaring, STEM, and community connections”