In the days leading up to the first day of school, the staff of Rockefeller Elementary "hit the street" to meet and greet the neighbors and spread the word about the school. Teachers, instructional assistants, specialists and even custodians volunteered to knock on doors in the apartments and homes in Rockefeller’s attendance zone to remind families about the start of the school year and to invite their neighbors to volunteer at the school.
“We felt it was important to introduce ourselves to our neighbors and to welcome our students back to Rockefeller," said Rockefeller's new principal, Janice Wilson. "It establishes a tone of mutual respect to start the year and to build positive community relationships.”
The success of the day was evident in the many happy hellos and the exchange of handshakes and hugs from current and former Rockefeller students and parents.
Entries Tagged as 'Teachers'
Gene Williams, Science Specialist, and Charlotte Cook, Young Astronaut Specialist at Carver Magnet Elementary, recently traveled to Silverthorne, Colorado, to attend a special conference. Key Issues: Bringing Environmental Issues to the Classroom is a national teacher training institute that provides middle-level educators with the process, skills and confidence to investigate current environmental issues with their students using the Keystone Center's non-biased framework. The framework brings the process of inquiry to the study of environmental issues. They returned with innovative ideas to implement into their current lessons.
Mr. Williams and Ms. Cook attended the Key Issues Institute on behalf of 3M Little Rock.
Dr. Sally Ride (center of photo), America’s first woman in space and a professor of astrophysics, invited six Little Rock School District elementary teachers to La Jolla, California, for an intensive four-day workshop of hands-on science and math activities. Only 100 educators were invited from around the country. The focus of the annual Sally Ride Academy is to encourage all children to be interested in math and science and to raise interest, especially in minorities and girls, in science and technology.
Jennifer Webb, Science Lead Teacher, attended the Sally Ride Academy this year with Gene Williams (Carver Magnet), Charlotte Cook (Carver Magnet), Tianka Sheard (Booker), Lisa Lollar (Fulbright), Lisa Mack (McDermott & Brady) and Kim Romain (Otter Creek).
The teachers learned that 80 percent of the jobs in the future will require knowledge gained through science and math education. By not providing a solid background in these subjects, Dr. Ride believes that we are channeling a majority of children to basic wage jobs in the future.
"In our culture, science is perceived as something that men do," said Dr. Ride, who views herself as a role model. "It's essential for girls to see examples of women in whatever career they want to pursue. I'm an example of someone who was a pretty normal 10-year-old girl who grew up to be an astronaut."
NASA launched a series of space missions while Ride was in elementary school. She recalls that every kid in her class wanted to be an astronaut and fly rockets.
"When I was growing up, science was cool...we need to make science cool again."
Debra Sloan, EAST facilitator at Forest Heights Middle School, recently was interviewed by eSchoolNews.com in its June 2010 issue concerning the use of Augmented Reality in the classroom. eSchool News is a national educational technology magazine.
Augmented Reality comes from virtual reality developer Scott Jochim and Digital Tech Frontier and is a technology that overlays digital information on top of real-world surroundings as viewed through a smart phone or other handheld, GPS-enabled device.
Augmented Reality is the next step in allowing technology to be interactive within all classrooms. Developing lesson modules that many different courses can utilize is very exciting as students not only can learn using the modules, but they also have the opportunity to create them!
"[Augmented Reality] is such a nice direction to go...in incorporating technology in the classroom, because it makes learning more interactive,” Sloan said in the article. “The kids love it because they are active...they love [participation] more than just sitting and watching things happen."
Virtual Reality projects such as the Clinton Library virtual tour and the current virtual tour of St. Vincent Infirmary have catapulted Forest Heights Middle School EAST into a positive, productive program where students are eager to participate.
Pictured above: Forest Heights EAST Lab students attending the national 2010 EAST Conference, where the group received its first-ever perfect score and the "Talk-A-Holics" award for spreading the word about their projects. Also pictured is EAST founder Tim Stephenson.
Robin Kratzke, a teacher at Dunbar Magnet Middle School and a Pathwise mentor, recently was named LRSD Mentor of the Year 2010 by the Arkansas Department of Education.
Pathwise is a state-sponsored program for mentoring new teachers. Each novice teacher receives a mentor for one or two years, depending upon the type of license that teacher has been issued. The mentor works closely with the novice teacher on a variety of activities that support the four domains of the Pathwise framework. The mentor also provides face-to-face interaction with the novice teacher.
Mrs. Kratzke teaches Spanish at Dunbar. She receives $500 and a certificate commemorating this honor.