Kelly in Kansas

Today I went to see one of our grant teachers teach about Washington DC and the monuments to her third graders. She's doing a great job of teaching her students more about American history - especially when elementary teachers have very little time to devote any specific time to anything else besides math, reading, and science. She gave me some ideas for some books about reading comprehension and one she'd found from the Ellis Island Foundation about doing genealogy with kids. I learned a great deal just watching how the students did - it's a major task just to keep them on task and in their seats. It's just amazing to watch the multitasking a teacher has to do. And their questions go all over the place. We went from the Lincoln Memorial to segregation. A third grader (a third grader!) remembered that Martin Luther King, Jr., made a speech there but was a little confused because he thought it was a speech against slavery. The teacher did a great job of helping him understand that it was a different time period but when you think of how little background he has to pull from, that was a great connection. And she made the most of it.

We had a session at the TAH project directors' meeting last week about evaluation - most importantly that it should be ongoing and not just at the end of the project (after all, that's only worthwhile to others, not necessarily the project itself once it's over). And treating teachers and students like they are people and NOT lab rats. I am definitely going to do more individual teacher interviews about the grant is impacting them and their teaching along with what their students are learning. Their last assignment in their online course (this is the grant with the delivered Master's degree) is to write a paper about what impact the grant is having in their teaching. Should be interesting reads - the first two that have been submitted are!