We typically think of teachers as being off during the summer, but several Cary Academy faculty each year choose to devote at least part of their well-deserved summer vacation time to professional growth activities.
Cary Academy offers two major summer grant programs for teachers, the Friday Fellowship and the Innovative Curriculum Grant. The Friday Fellowship program was launched in 2002 in honor of Mr. William C. Friday, President Emeritus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a founding member of the Cary Academy Board of Directors. The Innovative Curriculum Grant was introduced in 2017 to support projects tied specifically to the school’s strategic goals. These programs together are an important part of our school’s ongoing R&D effort, with the Friday Fellowship focused on the “R” (research/professional learning) and the Innovative Curriculum Grant focused on the “D” (development/curriculum creation and implementation).
So what exactly will our tireless teachers be working on this summer through these grant programs? Here’s a brief snapshot of their planned endeavors:
Under the Friday Fellowship Program…
Naomi Barlaz, Upper School History Teacher, will attend the Independent Schools Experiential Education Network (ISEEN) Summer Institute as a member of the History, English, and Language cohort. Participation in this institute will help Naomi to develop curricula within a more experiential model for the Soviet Russia and Global Democracies courses in World History.
Robert Coven, Upper School History Teacher, will attend Re-Designing Education to Shape a Better World, an international symposium to be held in Florence, Italy. Participation in this invitation-only symposium will allow Robert to join colleagues from around the world in a 3-day design challenge in which participants will work together to imagine, design and create concepts for education systems of the future.
Freya Kridle, Upper School Spanish Teacher, will participate in a private program of language and cultural immersion to be arranged with the Lingo Language Academy in Mérida, Mexico. This experience will give Freya a chance to refine her fluency in Spanish while also providing opportunities to take videos and conduct interviews on a variety of topics for use with her Spanish students.
Under the Innovative Curriculum Grant program…
Rachel Atay, Matt Greenwolfe and Charlotte Kelly, Upper School Physics Teachers, intend to refine the new physics course in Waves, Light and Electricity. They will work together to streamline the core curriculum, as well as to develop new POGIL (Process-Oriented Guided Inquiry Learning) experiences and robust extension activities aimed at meeting the needs of both the beginning and the more advanced students taking the class.
Andrew Chiaraviglio and Jane Panhorst, Middle School Science Teachers, will develop three new modules for Science 8 to expand and enrich the Physical Science and Water units. The new modules will integrate three types of technology: Geographic Information Systems software (GIS), augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR), and coding. Plans are for students to use GIS to create layered dynamic data maps of Cary Academy and surrounding land, AR/VR technology to create immersive presentations of a field trip to the SAS pond, and coding in connection with the design, build, and maintenance of a miniature aquaponics system set-up.
Lucy Dawson, Matt Koerner, Allison McCoppin and Leslie Williams, 7th Grade Teachers, and Maggie Grant, Service Learning Director, intend to transform the current Change the World unit from a three-week research project into a signature seventh-grade experience. The team of teachers will expand the unit to run across three trimesters and broaden the focus to include not only language arts and math, but also environmental science, engineering, and service learning components.
Katie Levinthal, Matthew-Ripley Moffitt, Danae Shipp and Katie Taylor, 6th Grade Teachers, will use interdisciplinary project-based learning, with a robust, gradeless feedback/reflection component, to connect and promote mastery of core skills in 6th grade. The team plans to develop a grading and assessment philosophy tied to 6th grade standards/competencies and create a week-long experience for students at the start of the school year focused on “habits of mind.”
Trish Yu, Upper School Chinese Teacher, will develop an Advanced trimester elective course in the Philosophy of Chinese Calligraphy. The course will be composed of six units highlighting the methods and philosophy of Chinese calligraphy and their historical and cultural significance. Trish also plans to make use of Tilt Brush by Google, a virtual reality tool that allows students to paint in 3-D space.
Congratulations to all of our summer grant recipients as they turn a summer off into a summer on!