Innovation has been a driving force at Cary Academy from the very beginning, identified as a core commitment before the ground was even broken on campus. How does CA inspire pedagogical innovation year after year? By empowering our incredible faculty to think outside the box with professional development opportunities that translate their interests into incredible learning opportunities for our students— in the classroom and beyond.
While we typically think of teachers as being off during the summer, each year, several Cary Academy faculty choose to devote at least part of their well-deserved summer vacation time to professional growth activities.
Cary Academy offers two major grant programs to support the professional development of our faculty during the summer months: the Friday Fellowship and the Innovative Curriculum Grant.
The Friday Fellowship program was created 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 launched in 2017 to support projects that advance CA’s strategic goals.
So, what exactly did our tireless teachers work on this summer through these grant programs? Here’s a brief snapshot of their planned endeavors:
Charlotte Kelly, Upper School science teacher, received a Friday Fellowship to support the development of a new Upper School elective course in marine science, as well as the launch of an Upper School SCUBA club. Key components of her fellowship work include participating in the Island School Teacher Conference to learn more about hands-on approaches to teaching marine biology, building and testing two robots for student use in marine research, and obtaining her SCUBA rescue diver certification.
Craig Lazarski and Kristi Ramey, Upper School math teachers, received a Friday Fellowship to attend the Bridges Conference at Aalto University in Helsinki, Finland. This experience will allow them to continue the creative research on the connections between art and math they first began in 2019 in partnership with Upper School art and design teacher Cayce Lee. They hope to bring back inspiring new and innovative ideas for cross-departmental projects to be implemented in the 2022-23 school year.
Brian Pugsley, Library Director, received a Friday Fellowship to complete a course in Machine Learning offered by Stanford University through Coursera, which will prepare him to offer a new Upper School computer science elective in Machine Learning/Artificial Intelligence for the 2022- 23 school year.
Karen Rose, Upper School art and design teacher, received a Friday Fellowship to participate in the CIDRE (Cultural Investigation and Digital Representation for Educators) study trip to Munich, Germany. She will be part of a cohort of educators learning to create better cultural understanding among students through the aid of media and technology.
Bill Velto, Upper School history teacher, received a fellowship to redesign the current world history/PATH elective course on terrorism. He will update the course content, develop resources to move away from a textbook, revise assignments, and create rubrics to reflect more of a mastery approach to student feedback.
CJ Bell and Andrew Chiaraviglio, Middle School science teachers, received an Innovative Curriculum Grant to transform the Water Stewardship unit in eighth-grade science into a more comprehensive experiential learning opportunity that carries through the year. They aim to incorporate additional field experiences, student-made interactive GIS maps, and a culminating community action project implemented by students. Chiaraviglio will also be working on another grant project to create an X-Day opportunity for students to build their own robots from scratch.
Sam Best and Meredith Stewart, Middle School language arts teachers, received an Innovative Curriculum grant to redesign the writing component of eighth-grade language arts to focus on a recursive process of drafting, feedback, reflection, and revision throughout the year, anchored in a competency-based approach to assessment.
Allyson Buie, Upper School English teacher, received an Innovative Curriculum Grant to redesign the ninth-grade English course to reflect a new “Coming of Age” theme. Texts for the new course will be carefully chosen to reflect adolescent experiences from a variety of cultural viewpoints. She will also seek community connections to help bring some of the experiences off the page and into the classroom.
Tamara Friend, Middle School science teacher, received an Innovative Curriculum Grant to develop a new unit for seventh-grade science focused on environmental justice in indigenous North Carolina communities. This unit—part of a more extensive collaboration among seventh-grade teachers to bring indigenous perspectives into the curriculum— is also an outgrowth of her participation in an experiential education trip for teachers to the Bribri Territories of Costa Rica.
Abby Seeskin, Upper School English teacher, received an Innovative Curriculum Grant to integrate podcasting into a new Upper School English elective in contemporary poetics so that students can produce literary commentary for a public audience.
Geoff Stanbury, Upper School English Teacher, received an Innovative Curriculum Grant to develop the curriculum for the new Upper School English elective, The Literature of Love. He will develop modules for the course that encourage student-led analysis and reflection in ways accessible to diverse personalities and learning styles. Students will also have opportunities to explore and share ideas collaboratively utilizing tech-forward methods such as creating radio plays, faux documentary videos, song mashups, or Google Street View tours illustrating different dimensions of “love.”
Trish Yu, Upper School Chinese Teacher, received an Innovative Curriculum Grant to design the curriculum for the new Intermediate-Low Chinese course to be offered in the Upper School beginning with the 2022- 23 school year. She will be creating 10 original thematic course modules to be used in place of a commercial textbook, as well as developing a series of hands-on activities woven into the modules to enrich student learning.
In addition to these grant opportunities, a team of 17 Cary Academy teachers also participated in a two-day Experiential Education Design Institute facilitated by Dr. Christen Clougherty, Founder and Executive Director of the Nobis Project, a non-profit educational organization working with educators to develop community engagement experiences that prepare student leaders to create a more just, sustainable, and equitable world.
Team members will use what they learned at this June event to design robust new experiential learning X-Day opportunities for the 2022-23 school year. Serving on the team are Nicky Allen, Lauren Bullock, Tamara Friend, Tyler Gaviria, Richard Jones, Charlotte Kelly, Matt Koerner, Cayce Lee, Katie Levinthal, Heidi Maloy, Alicia Morris, Caydee Revelle, Karen Rose, Abby Seeskin, Danae Shipp, Katie Taylor, and Trish Yu.