Sheridan students push school to go solar

Has your school turned “shop” into engineering? What does it take to teach that kind of course? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.

Check out this idea from the Kitchen Pantry Scientist for a seasonal treat the whole class can enjoy! Using a few odds and ends from around the house, a green leaf, and a leaf that has turned color already, classes can enjoy a lesson in plant chromatography.

For another variation on this leaf theme (or perhaps part of a larger unit plan), offer students cameras to photograph leaves and trees that they see all around them and then design their own webpages that highlight key scientific information about the leaves.  Students can include their own artwork, like a book of pressed leaves or a poster categorizing the leaves they have found.

Tell us about your ideas for a seasonal experiment.  What are you working on with your classroom?

“Most everyone recognizes that teaching is vital work that demands a special kind of endurance and caring, often against long odds in trying circumstances. Yet I rarely meet non-teachers who think that the job is very complicated,” he says.

Merz envisions ways to remind strangers on a plane of what it really takes to teach: “We should be ready with examples that leave no doubt about the panorama of complex skills that accomplished teachers take a career to master,” he writes. And he spells out ways that teachers  are like engineers, artists, doctors.”

What about you? What professions do you channel in the classroom? What special skills do you think teaching takes that the general public might not be aware of?