Last week, 26 teachers from 15 school districts joined us for our new online teacher professional development course – NGSS in Action: Creating Resources for At-Home Science Learning.
This free online course – which will run for 4 sessions throughout the month – is designed to provide educators with the resources they need to help students engage with science at home in meaningful and locally-relevant ways.
Some of the key takeaways of last week’s session?
- Attending to equity is crucially important at all times, but even more so during COVID-19. Teachers in the course are grappling with questions related to student access to technology, providing opportunities for student-directed learning, and more.
- Connecting learning to student’s home and family experiences can be an important way to recognize the cultural and scientific expertise that families hold and engage families in sharing knowledge with their children. Every day activities like cooking, cleaning, gardening, and more can be meaningful sites of learning.
- Identifying scientific phenomena and encouraging wonder does not have to be contained to the classroom! Without the constraints of a formal learning space, teachers have the opportunity to cultivate more inclusive and creative science learning.
Thank you to the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI) ClimeTime initiative for making this online course possible!
