by editor | Oct 19, 2016 | Environmental Literacy
Critical Questions
1. What kinds of support are available in your school, district and community for supporting environmental educational activities?
2. In what ways can environmental education activities enhance learning?
3. What are the most effective strategies for integrating environmental education across all content areas?
4. In what ways do students, teachers and communities benefit from classrooms engaged in environmental educational projects?
5. What are compelling environmental issues that can be explored through environmental educational projects?
Possible Actions
1. Become well informed about the characteristics of environmental education, effective models and strategies for integrating across subject areas taught in school.
2. Share this information with your colleagues, friends, and others interested in integrating environmental education into their classrooms or conducting environmental action projects in their communities.
3. Know your national, state, and local school standards. You will find them on the Internet. Consider ways in which environmental education activities can achieve many of the standards across various content areas.
4. Learn effective strategies for guiding students in conducting comprehensive and sophisticated research about environmental issues, solving specific local environmental problems, and acting on their solutions.
5. Encouraged by recent brain research, many educators recognize the value of hands-on, project- and problem-based learning methods, and integrated-interdisciplinary approaches. Use the natural environment and local community as the framework, and integrate environmental education into your everyday teaching.
-from New Horizons for Learning
by editor | Aug 18, 2016 | Learning Theory
Chymograph
by Jim Martin·
kymograph (‘wave writer’): a device that produces traces on a piece of smoked paper clamped onto a rotating drum, a mechanically amplified graphical representation of spatial position over time, such as the rise and fall of a worm’s blood vessel as pulses of blood travel through it. Invented by Carl Ludwig in the mid-1800’s, it consists of a revolving drum wrapped with a sheet of smoked paper on which a stylus connected to the tissue being measured moves up and down, recording changes of motion. (Adapted from Turtles, all the way down: A scrapbook about various hacks and obscure topics.
Chymograph
beautiful
clear grey skin
a touch of blue
the blade reaches deep
line unfolds
reveals skin has edges
and depth
beneath the line
aortic arches pulse
beat out the rhythm
of life
vibrant
vital
vivacious
determined to live
to live
Life
bursts from the wound
an emotional visual
physical
blow to my mind
my soul
can I
because I teach
sacrifice this life
so a line may be scratched
on a piece of smoked paper
❧
Early in my teaching career, I was demonstrating how to set up a chymograph to measure the pulse rate of blood as it was pumped through an angle worm’s dorsal aorta. The set up was simple, but had to be done with great care. Students in the lab class would then introduce their worms to water baths at various temperatures and measure the worms’ response to these environments via changes in pulse rate.
I made the incision along the worm’s long back, exposing the pulsing aortic arches, five blood vessels that pumped blood from the long ventral vein up to the dorsal aorta. These arches perform the same function as our heart, and may represent an ancient step in the ultimate development of the mammalian heart.
As the pulsing arches were exposed, I saw the worm very clearly, not as Lumbricus terrestris, the common angle worm, but as a living being, determined to continue to live at any cost; I saw life itself, and its right to its own existence, and remarked on this to the class. The beauty and persistence of life. An odd comment from a zoology teacher who was showing students how to kill an animal to learn about it.
My life took an unexpected turn at that moment; both my teaching and my personal life. At the time, I was in the early stages of starting to deal with my experiences in the Gulf of Tonkin, where I learned that some human lives were sacrosanct, others were not. I asked then, and still do now, ‘How does a life, valued and valuable, just and humane where it lives, become valueless and inhumane to those who live elsewhere?’ Is there some connection between this human phenomenon and how conceptions of deities and heavens change with changes in time, culture, and circumstances? Experiencing the worm, I began a long transition in my view of life.
The analog line the worm’s pulse traced on the chymograph’s slowly rotating smoked paper was thin and eloquent, instructive and inspiring; its own cognitive beauty. The ‘heart’ was marking its own course, its own activity, its own life and demise. Surely this is a worthy thing to contemplate, reflect upon, and to refocus one’s thoughts and beliefs about life on Earth.
The very first thing that wavering line did was to expand my view of life, to consider it to be more than the lives of humans, their worth and rights. I had a clear cognitive understanding of the evolution of life from the components of cells to cells to multicellular life, but had never personally considered the thought that these lives of all creatures were lived, that they persisted until they could persist no more. My view now began to include the right of all living things to their lives, including human living things.
Because we need to eat, the facts of ecology and nutrition were a stumbling block for awhile, until I realized that all things are in the process of becoming other things. They have to do this in order to live; a paradox built right into the fact of life on Earth.
One thing has seemed to me to separate how humans go about this business of living from the way of all other life. Each living and non-living thing in every ecosystem goes about its work with integrity. They don’t cheat, so, together, they produce a remarkably efficient and effective economy. We don’t exercise this ethical integrity, and create endless problems for the rest of life on Earth. Confucius spoke the only realistic solution to this human dilemma when he suggested we know ourselves, our inner selves, and remain true to that person; doing this he knew we would learn we should treat others as we would wish to be treated ourselves. And so, I began to concentrate on learning to do this, to know myself and to know others; not their externals, but the person deep within.
That person is difficult to miss once you’ve learned to locate it. Eventually, you recognize patterns, and come to the certain understanding that we’re all people, just people. That sets everything straight.
I began to appreciate the relevance of Dryas’ [the author’s late wife — ED.] inclusive spirituality, her sense of the personal and spiritual connection among all living things. The scientist in me needed mechanisms, and continued to look for them, but I could not deny the strength and universal relevance of the spirit that I began to perceive which pervaded all living beings. And I began a search for how humans have perceived this during all of their history in Earth; I continue to try to make sense of our search for spirituality and the traps that are built into being human which impede and disrupt that search. Since we can never know for certain, we are all searchers.
My teaching began to organize itself so that I and my students could observe intact organisms while doing them little or no harm. For instance, you can hold an angle worm still (try it on a moist paper towel) and count the pulses as each bolus (blob) of blood moves down the dorsal aorta. Time them or count how many there are per minute. This provided information about the worm’s response to temperature as useful as that gained from the chymograph. After all was done, the worm went out into the yard. The effect of this change in direction was to focus my students on the organism they were studying, and not on the instruments they might use to make their observations. They began to notice behaviors and other relevant phenomena associated with the environmental perturbations they introduced their subjects to. And I, in turn, turned my focus to the students’ behaviors and relevant phenomena while they went about their work and their thinking. In the end, I learned more from them than I ever did in my education and inservice coursework.
I discovered that organizing my delivery so that students come into my classroom to become scientists did more to involve and invest them in their educations, and empower them as persons, than coming in to learn about science, and being tested on it, ever did. They began to focus on following up on the needs-to-know that their inquiries generated, rather than getting the right answer, then forgetting immediately after the test. And so they carried the weight of their learning, while I busied myself getting reference works on the shelves, providing lab particulars they needed, and so forth. My lectures, which were good ones, were reduced to small mini-lectures, often delivered at a lab table, in response to questions students posed. I recall one sunny afternoon, walking through the lab as the class worked away, wondering what I had done to my stable world of lecture, lab, exam.
And so where does this take me in responding to my original concern about my right to take a life so that a line may be scratched. If I truly respect all life, can I sacrifice an animal’s life in order to know more about it? How about a plant’s life? A paramecium’s? Are there circumstances where this is ethically permissible? I’m not an ethecist, but I think that any time my only resort is to use a life to learn what may be applied to the benefit of others, I must look upon it as a sacrifice and ensure that whatever is done is humane, is as it would be done with a human.
Fortunately, we managed to eliminate these sacrifices in my curricula without short-changing my students’ understandings about the phenomena they studied. In the process, I’ve learned to find the person behind the outward appearances we learn to attend to, the inner light that shines in each of us, that holds our hopes and aspirations, that wants to be recognized and appreciated, and which recognizes and appreciates others.
I’m still working on the insight an angle worm gave me forty years ago. I know from my personal experience that it does no harm to communicate directly with the person who lives at the heart of each of us. And that it usually helps us all relax and appreciate one another’s company on the road we all travel. Together, whether we acknowledge it or not.
When next you see an angle worm, look carefully on its back for a long, dark line. Observe it carefully, and you’ll see either a recognizable pulse, or the line will fade and reappear on a regular schedule. When you see it, you’ll know that its aortic arches are doing exactly what your heart is doing for you. And for the rest of us.
❧
by editor | Aug 18, 2016 | Service learning
These tips, developed by The Straub Environmental Learning Center, may be helpful for teachers who are beginning to integrate a service learning component into the classroom:
1.Start small, and find other teachers who are interested in doing a community project. Support and collaboration are critical for success as you begin this work.
2. Use available community resources. Don’t let issues like transportation and funding stand in your way. Be creative and persistent, and employ all available community resources.
3. Get to know community partners. Be prepared to make calls and meet with prospective partners. They will probably be more than willing to work with you, and may have resources you can use.
4.Don’t let your class become a work crew. The work you do should be the work of your partner. This is not a field trip or guest presentation, but authentic involvement in your partner’s work.
5. Be organized and plan ahead. You can never foresee all possibilities, but staying organized will make you more successful with students and partners.
6. Promote the program. It’s not about you; it’s about the students and their capacity to serve as a resource for their community.
7. Involve students in the selection of their work, and in designing their products. This may be the first time they have some control over their learning. It can be empowering for them.
8. Consider sustainability. As your work expands, think about ways for the program to sustain itself after you leave.
9. Don’t worry about having to know the content, or being in charge of direct instruction. You will become a facilitator; instruction comes from the community partner and the curriculum resources you organize. One of the great joys of this approach is that you often get to learn along with your students. Sometimes, they can even teach you. In other words, the teacher is not the “sage on the stage,” but the “guide on the side.”
10. Remember: This is about community! The work students do must have a clear context. They should come out of their study knowing what their community is, how it functions and how they can participate. This approach also fosters community building within the classroom, as students reconnect with themselves and each other.
by editor | Jul 26, 2016 | Features on Outstanding Programs, Outstanding Programs in EE
Environmental Learning Center:
Restoration project heals environment, community and college
Written by Shelly Parini, CCC senior executive project manager
he Environmental Learning Center at Clackamas Community College (CCC) represents something different to everyone. Some see it as a place to stroll and commune with nature. Some see it as an outdoor learning laboratory. And others see it as a pioneer in recycling.
As the college marks its 50th anniversary, the Environmental Learning Center (ELC) is entering a new phase with the restoration of the headwaters of Newell Creek on the CCC Oregon City campus.
The ELC is located on a 5-acre natural area containing the headwaters of Newell Creek. The site is part of the 1800-acre Newell Creek watershed, a steep forested canyon that is bordered by the neighborhoods and businesses of Oregon City.
The restoration efforts of the site are made possible through a Metro Nature in Neighborhood grant and the contributions of others who have stepped forward.
The restoration will:
- Enhance water quality within the Newell Creek watershed
- Increase the capacity of the ELC to serve as an educational resource for college students, schools and teachers, industry members and families
- Provide passive recreation for east metro communities
- Leverage the ongoing support of community partners committed to protecting the health and sustainability of the Newell Creek watershed
Concurrent with the restoration plans, CCC undertook an extensive community engagement initiative, the ELC Historical Preservation Project in 2016. The college invited community members, students, faculty and staff to share memories of the past, as well as dreams for the future of the site. Hundreds of people have participated in this process.
The college and the ELC have shared a long history together. The relationship, while sometimes rocky, was shaped around a vision of environmental learning and stewardship. Today, the ELC is a coveted indoor and outdoor classroom for college-wide programs such as Water and Environmental Technology. It is also continues to attract regional universities and local community educational partners to the site. As the restoration project moves forward into the summer of 2017, the college is pausing to reflect on the history of this place and the many people who shaped its shores.
The Visionaries
In his memoir “Transforming Lives,” CCC past president emeritus John Keyser wrote, “The ELC developed early in the college’s history under the leadership of President John Hakanson, as a response to intense community interest in developing new strategies for living in harmony with nature.”
The ELC has a rich history as an educational resource for the college, regional schools, industry and the community. Located on the site of a former Smucker’s processing plant, the ELC was created to demonstrate what people could do to reclaim industrial sites, address storm water issues and restore wildlife habitat in urban areas.
The idea of creating the ELC gained momentum in 1973, when a group of students under the leadership of Leland John, an art instructor, formed a committee and drafted a plan. “At the ELC, art, community and the environment came together in a singularly unique way, celebrating all three because people were willing to work together for the benefit of their creation,” ELC founder Jerry Herrmann said.
Herrmann had the uncanny ability to recruit volunteers and talent to the ELC. One of his more infamous efforts was recruiting the Oregon National Guard to excavate the site; transforming it into what we know today as the “ecology ponds.” Herrmann always dreamed big when it came to the ELC. In 1977 he hired Nan Hage to design the center’s first pavilion. Hage designed the building to enhance the environment. It was built in 1981 and cost a mere $10,000. Being astute recyclers, Herrmann and Hage got a much of the materials donated. All of the cabinets and flooring are Malaysian mahogany. The boards are ballast from the bottom of ships.
Recycling became a driving force for the visionaries. Herrmann developed a recycling depot at the ELC for the community. It soon became a full-service recycling center, putting the ELC on the map. In fact, it was one of the most successful recycling depots in the state at that time, handling up to 100 tons of material a year.
Stories were also recycled at the ELC. In 1984, storyteller Dean “Hawk” Edwards worked alongside volunteer coordinator Leslie Rapacki to develop and care for Hawk Haven, also known as the birds of prey exhibit.
“The goal was to create an educational wildlife habitat on an industrial site. In essence to recycle the industrial site itself,” Hage said. Clearly they did that, and then some.
In 1987, Lakeside Educational Hall was completed, providing a place for the community to gather and take classes. “Eighty percent of the construction material in this facility was simulated wood made from recycled plastics,” Keyser said. The lighting was recycled from marijuana grow lights donated by local law enforcement officers.
The next visionary to land on the scene was astronomer and scientist Ken Cameron. It was his connections that led to the Haggart family dome donation to the ELC. The Haggart Observatory, as it is now known, opened March 7, 1989, so the community could view the partial eclipse of the sun occurring that day.
The Guardians
As recycling revenue began to decline in the 1990s and CCC subsidies dwindled, the ELC suffered setbacks which strained its relationship with the college. The ELC was in need of a new champion. After a number of interim executive directors, Keyser, who was then president, stepped forward to put the ELC back on track by providing several years of stable funding and critical infrastructure updates. This investment attracted environmental educator John LeCavalier, who was hired in 1996 to reactivate the ELC.
LeCavalier’s leadership was instrumental in attracting like-minded partners, like Larry Beutler of Clearing Magazine, to the ELC [Ed note – CLEARING actually moved to the ELC several years before LeCavalier began his tenure as director.]. His contributions also include developing new programs and initiatives. He further established an endowment for the ELC that would keep it resuscitated for many years to come.
LeCavalier believes the ELC has a life of its own. During his interview he noted, “There is nothing to indicate that the tenacity of this physical place at the headwaters of Newell Creek and the people that have been involved it will not continue well into the future.”
When LeCavalier departed due to budget cuts in 2006, Alison Heimowitz took over as the ELC’s education coordinator. Even as a part-time instructor, Heimowitz developed critical environmental educational partnerships that are still in place today. Together, these partnerships bring hundreds of children to the site each year to learn in an outdoor living laboratory. Heimowitz was also the spark plug behind the writing and designing of the Metro Nature in Neighborhood Capital Grant, which was approved by the Board of Education in 2013. The CCC Foundation Board of Directors also stepped forward to support the grant by committing to raise the critical match to make the grant possible.
The Future
The Newell Creek Headwaters Restoration and Education Project brings together a range of public agencies, conservation groups and community members to engage in a collaborative impact initiative. This project brings to life the best of what the ELC has been and provides hope for what it still can be. After hundreds of hours of conversation with the multitude of community members who consider themselves friends of the ELC, the relevancy of this place and what it has to offer is as important today, as it ever was.
When asked about the relevancy of the ELC’s future, the retired U.S. Rep. Darlene Hooley said quite simply, “Environmental learning never goes out of style.
If you would like to stay engaged with the ELC and the restoration and education efforts, visit www.clackamas.edu/ELC.
by editor | May 24, 2016 | Learning Standards, Learning Theory, Schoolyard Classroom
Use the Real World to Integrate Your Curriculum
In today’s test-driven schools, there’s little room for including the world outside the classroom in the curriculum, even though school is supposed to be based on the real world. And prepare us for it.
by Jim Martin
CLEARING Associate Editor
his year I watched good classroom programs which involved and invested students in the learning they were doing come to a halt for several weeks so they could prepare for the standards tests. This, during what is the best teaching time of the school year: January through March, when there are very few breaks in the schedule, and teachers can concentrate on the delivery of curricula. Somehow, we have to wake up, get back to our senses, and use this time for learning.
That said, students do need to go out into the world to learn. Let’s look at two possibilities, the first in a stream, the other in a school yard. We’ll do the stream first, since it is the kind of place we ought to be going to. Then the school yard, since it is often the only alternative we have.
There are many places where students can find a streambank to explore. Or a wooded area; an open meadow; some place where they can see and count the organisms who live there. Then learn about them. These are wonderful places for students to engage new content via Active Learning. There is one, a small stream, near where I live. Here’s a list of some of those who live there: Salmon fry (very small, recently hatched, eat copepods); Copepods (eat algae and organic debris); Amphipods (eat organic debris, algae); Mayflies (eat algae, organic debris); Caddisflies (eat organic debris, algae, mayflies); Organic debris (this is dead and decomposing organisms on the streambed); and Algae (plants found on the streambed and submerged rocks). This list of organisms and information about them is abbreviated, mostly out of necessity; this is a blog, not a book!
Why Employ Active Learning?
Active learning is the best way for humans to learn. It entails having a learner-generated reason to find out something, and access to the resources which will help them find out. Finding plants and animals in a riparian area always stimulates students, and easily leads to conceptual learnings. Providing their teacher is comfortable with this way to learn. This is because noticing something in the world outside your body that catches your interest can, if you’re allowed to follow up on noticing, engage your prefrontal cortex and the machinery it employs in critical thinking. That builds brains. We need to do it.
Let’s say you find a stream near your school which has been restored, and supports a small salmon population. Your class can make a round trip to it in 20 minutes, which leaves time to make observations each time they visit. When they make a visit, they’ll group to study macroinvertebrates on the bottom of the stream, algae on the stream bottom and rocks, and animals living in the water column who will fit into a small net. Next, they’ll organize themselves to learn to identify the organisms they’ve found, and find out what the animals eat. This is an opening to several NGSS standards: Let’s look at four, one each from K-3, 4-5, 6-8, and 9-12. (I haven’t started this yet, but it should be doable. It’s all LS.) So, while they’re gathering data to build a food web, they can also be embarking on an integrated curriculum about diversity, thermal tolerance, diet, a John Steinbeck novel; whatever is coming up.
For K-3, look at K-LS1-1: From Molecules to Organisms: Structures and Processes, in which students use observations to describe patterns of what plants and animals (including humans) need to survive. In this case, building the food web helps students answer the question of what do living things need to survive. That might also lead to learning how some organisms not having enough to eat might affect their food web.
For 4-5, try 5-LS2-1: Ecosystems: Interactions, Energy, and Dynamics, in which students develop a model to describe the movement of matter among plants, animals, decomposers, and the environment. In this case, when one species becomes scarce in its ecosystem, then is lost, this affects the movement of matter in its food web. In doing this, it also affects species diversity. This might lead to learning more about diversity, how we determine it, and what it provides for the species in a food web.
For 6-8, try MS-LS2-4: Ecosystems: Interactions, Energy, and Dynamics, in which students construct an argument supported by empirical evidence that changes to physical or biological components of an ecosystem affect populations. This might lead to learning more about how their food web reflects ecosystems, and some of the biotic interactions which affect them. Middle school students might also use their food webs to approach another NGSS standard, MS-LS2-5: Ecosystems: Interactions, Energy, and Dynamics, in which students evaluate competing design solutions for maintaining biodiversity and ecosystem services. Again, they learn how to assess biodiversity, and apply those learnings to their food web.
For 9-12, try HS-LS2-6: Ecosystems: Interactions, Energy, and Dynamics, in which students evaluate the claims, evidence, and reasoning that the complex interactions in ecosystems maintain relatively consistent numbers and types of organisms in stable conditions, but changing conditions may result in a new ecosystem. For instance, they can use their food web to learn about thermal tolerance, and how it might cause the loss of one or more species in their food web. Then they might even search the literature for current evidence that, as species move from one ecosystem to another due to the stressors involved in global warming, they are replaced by other species, more tolerant of the changed thermal regime.
Can you engage active learning?
All of these can be enhanced with lab and field activities. This is in addition to the learning each group of students engages. Because they’re learning about particulars they have engaged in a stream, these learnings will become part of a readily accessible conceptual schematum, rather than a smorgasbord of disconnected facts.
Pick one of these which doesn’t seem overpowering, look it up on the NGSS web site, and try it out. Read what the NGSS says about it, then think of what you understand of food webs, and see how you can put the two together. When you’ve done that, then see what area of science you will soon be teaching, and see how you can use the NGSS description plus what you know of your food web, to integrate all into a workable unit to teach.
While the NGSS documents don’t often refer to food webs, there are some references to them at the elementary, middle, and high school levels. You can just do a search for ‘food web’ to find them. I’ve used the labels and titles, and the descriptions from the NGSS site in this writing. But I’m uncomfortable with the bureaucratic way they describe a very vivacious, dynamic, interesting system. A food web is one place where much science can be effectively addressed. Then, instead of learning facts about systems, students develop conceptual schemata which tie many areas of science together in meaningful concepts, ideas of how the world works.
We’ll use the organisms I found at the stream near my home for the next step; and that is to build a food web for this riparian area. As in all studies like this, the data collected will apply to just my reach, not the whole stream. To be more confident that my sample represents the stream, I’d have to sample more reaches. This collected information can then be used to construct food webs for that extended reach of the stream. Here’s one for the stream near where I live. (I had to look in side channels and slow waters near the stream’s edge to find the fry. Then, lacking time to complete the sampling, I looked up their diets on the web. I used this information to construct the food web in Figure 1.)
Figure 1. A Riparian Food Web. Elements of the food web are organized by trophic level.
While I’ve named each organism just once, I’ve grouped larvae, both young and mature, in one place, even though they might show up within more than one trophic level if I have considered all of the stages in their lives. And for some, there are more than one species gathered under a name. Considering all species and their life stages would make a more complex, but more informative food web if done with more attention to these details. You can take this as far as your students can comprehend or stand. Complexity increases comprehension up to a point. Beyond that, learners are on overload, and their work isn’t effective. This information/concept overload point is different for each student. You can overcome these differences in capacity by parceling out the work according to each student’s capacity and instructional level. And interest!
You’ll find that active learning is evident in the negotiations within groups as they sort out the pieces of their food webs. As they learn more details about the organisms, their conceptual understandings grow exponentially. And their food webs become more complex, and more meaningful.
Now, we’ll go to a school yard to build a food web. It may not be a riparian area, but it is an area we can study nonetheless. (When I taught inmate students in the college program at the Oregon State Penitentiary, they were able to discover and report data on food webs found in the prison’s exercise yard, an ecosystem where there were no trees, shrubs, or streams. We, too, can do this, without going to prison.) Natural areas are the best to study, but as a workable alternative, you can do an effective study in your own school yard. For lots of us, this is a more workable alternative than field trips to a stream or forest. Take a look. What can you find? Jot down their names, or make names up. (As you learn their actual names, update your food web. This tactic works well with students.) Make an initial food web from your observations, then amplify this with information students research. (Food webs are easier to assess in fall and spring, when the organisms are there in greatest number. However, as compost piles remain warm in their interior, you can probably assess them any time. Be sure to cover them back up!)
Here is one I made up as an example. It’s based on what you might find in a compost pile in a corner of the school yard. If you’ve ever rummaged a compost pile, you’ll know that this is a much simpler food web than you’d find in most compost.
Figure 2. A Schoolyard Food Web.
Food webs, by themselves, provide a visible platform for thinking about organisms and their ecosystems in a dynamic, conceptual way. Both species diversity and thermal tolerance can be effectively introduced via a food web. Thermal tolerance can affect diversity as species move from an ecosystem where temperatures have gone from within their thermal tolerance range to one which offers a better thermal regime. Diversity can attenuate the effects of thermal tolerance limits by reducing the effects of losing a food web species. The more diverse the population, the better the chance that other species will utilize the food sources that the departing species exploited. And might be exploited by the same consumer which consumed the species which departed. Like the visible, dynamic structure of a drawn food web, these two biological phenomena effectors of ecosystem stability live in a dynamic relationship with one another.
So, what will they do with their food webs? In the next two blogs, let’s look at diversity first, then thermal tolerance. Both will provide valuable insights into the effects of global warming on living things; which is something our students need to become experts in.
This is a regular feature by CLEARING “master teacher” Jim Martin that explores how environmental educators can help classroom teachers get away from the pressure to teach to the standardized tests, and how teachers can gain the confidence to go into the world outside of their classrooms for a substantial piece of their curricula. See the other installments here, or search Categories for “Jim Martin.”
