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Language: en

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The whole idea is that we’ve been working
for about fifteen years on our teacher education

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programs, teacher professional development.

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About fifteen years ago we started with very
intensive model of five-day summer institute

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followed by follow-up in the classroom with
our educators throughout the course of the

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year.

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So, leaving behind the sort of half day teacher
workshop model and going to something really

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much sort of deeper and, as I said, intensive
where we spend five days-- five solid days

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with teachers in the summer.

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We were introducing a pedagogy that was called
event-based science, which is really just

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a-- kind of an iteration of problem-based--
or project-based learning, where you begin

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a curriculum unit with a real news story--
actual news footage to hook the students into

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this particular topic where they know this
isn’t just some lab out of someone’s imagination,

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that this is a real thing that happened, and
then the rest of the unit sort of builds off

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of that hook where a set of activities are
developed.

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And students are challenged to complete a
task that resembles real life work.

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One of the most successful ones was a group
who was-- decided to design a unit around

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a sixth grade standard on ecology.

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And it was particularly about food webs and
food chains.

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And they decided that their hook was going
to be about invasive species and that their

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unit was going to focus on the way invasive
species can kind of come into an area and

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mess up a food chain or mess up a food web.

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And therefore sort of through that interaction,
they would be teaching the students about

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food webs and food chains.

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So, they chose as their hook a piece of news
footage about a bird called the monk parakeet

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that has invaded our region of Connecticut,
which one might not think that that’s such

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a bad thing, but the monk parakeets are--
their native range is much farther south.

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And to make it through the Connecticut winters,
they build these massive colonial nests on

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electrical transformers.

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And huge masses of sticks and things.

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And so this has caused some problems.

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It makes it next to impossible for the electric
utility workers to actually get to these transformers.

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And I think there have been some cases of
fires, as well, because of this.

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Because they generate heat, and that’s why
the birds are making their nests on them.

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So, they’re more of nuisance species, but
there is some real danger potential.

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And so, this was an interesting news clip.

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And I think it did really hook kids in and
is still hooking kids in.

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the great thing is that the teachers who went
through this program are still using this.

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They’re using it in a second, now third
year.

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And we’ve introduced this particular unit
on food webs and food chains now to teachers

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in three other schools who weren’t even
involved in the project to begin with.

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In every single case, it appears there’s
a statistically significant improvement in

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student performance after the use of the units
that these teachers came up with-- with the

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science units, in every case.�