Teacher Meeting

So the night after Nairn, I went to a meeting of ten or so teachers discussing a possible activity to go along with the new curriculum for excellence. Their idea is to have schools take 6-8 weeks and study wind power (a topic that's quite relevant, because a lot of debates are going on locally about where wind turbines should be and whether or not in the ocean or on the land, etc.). The meeting was interesting because it wasn't just math or science teachers... there was an english teacher, too... and maybe others?

Maybe I should introduce the curriculum for excellence before I go any further. I guess the main goal is curricular change. But focused around a multi-disciplinary approach... a project-based one.... redefining what "evaluation" is. Hm. I guess the webpage has that on there. But it's all rather vague still, and it seems that even the teachers themselves are trying to get their heads around it. There's also glow, which is meant to be a way for all the schools to be connected together.

Aaaanyway. So this group of teachers was focusing on one of the examples for the new curriculum. They're trying to put forward a guide rather than an instruction set... something that can allow for the teachers to have flexibility for their schools and local strengths. They don't want it to be something that is the same everywhere. They want the teachers to communicate what they're doing... what worked and what didn't.

The english teacher was really excited about getting kids to write about things related to project. The math teachers are interested in working with science teachers. Everyone at that table seemed really excited about this.

And I'm not getting it across well here, but I think they all had a good mindset about things. They're interested in process instead of goal-oriented learning. And not only process, but repeating the process and trying to get things growing and changing.

Yeah. I'm not sure where I'm going with this, other than just being happy that after the meeting in Nairn, it was refreshing to be with a group of teachers who seemed to really care about what they did and also a group that was really trying to push new things forward. I think that they're maybe a group that could really benefit from contact with our group/seeing what our group has done in the past. And it made me really wish that we had a better system for showing/talking about what we've done.