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Thank You for 20 "Mo" Years.

By Anonymous
After 20 years of teaching at Brookfield Central, I am saying goodbye. Although I spent the majority of that time in the physics classroom alongside my learners. That changed for my last 18 weeks. I ended up in a place similar to where I started, teaching chemistry and biology. So, rather than dealing with juniors and seniors at the end of their high school careers, I was in classrooms with freshmen and sophomores still trying to find their place. At the same time, I was learning and teaching a set curriculum I hadn't taught in over a decade. So, we were learning. But, of course, I already knew the content.  The point of this post is to take a step back, reflect, and share the gratitude from the last students I had in my 20 years at Brookfield Central High School, as expressed through the cards and notes they made for me on my last day with them.  I don't take many "yay me" moments. But after 20 years, I'll soak this one in.
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Three Days in the Valley Part 2

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I've been to a few conferences and conventions in my time. I've heard quite a few keynote speeches in that time.  But on day 2 of PBL World, I think I finally understood the purpose of a keynote speech and speaker is.  I could go on describing the keynote, but I won’t.  The keynote speaker was Stephen Ritz.  That’s all I'll say as preamble. Please take the time to watch the keynote and feel yourself empowered to get out of your chair and plan a project for change. Try to resist, you can’t. For more info on Stephen and his students, head to greenbronxmachine.org . So what was going through my mind during this presentation?  Well, my mind drifted to possible projects.  The driving question that came to my mind was “How can you cost effectively grow food in a room with no windows?”  My classroom has no windows so it would be perfect. Growing plants may be a perfect project for a biology classroom, but what place does it have in a physics...
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Three Days in the Valley

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This past week, I spent three days in Napa California attending PBL World which was run by the Buck Institute for Education ( bie.org ).  A colleague from my school and I were enrolled in PBL 101 an intensive course for those new to Project Based Learning. To say the experience was transformative, would be to sell it short. Simply put, everything I thought I knew about PBL was renovated.  I learned that what I thought I was practicing was not Project Based Learning as it should be done. I learned so much that I need to write about it in order to process it all. I plan on posting about each of the days individually over the next couple of weeks.  So without further ado, let me talk about day 1. This was written on the plane ride back, so please forgive any glaring proofreading errors. Day 1 Keynote The first part of the keynote was by John Mergendoller of the Buck Institute and his focus was on Gold Standard PBL. It was a very interesting time to att...
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