On Friday, I was so pleased to be able to return to one of my favorite days of the year, High-Interest Day at Brookfield Elementary School. This is a day where I have been able to bring the concepts of physics to k-5 graders. You may be asking yourself, "Elementary students doing physics?" YES! Not just experimenting, but understanding the concepts behind the physics of electricity and sound. This is a very special day I have had the opportunity to be involved in since 2017. So, how are we able to bring the concepts of electricity and sound traditionally taught to high school 11th and 12th graders to the elementary level? There are a few keys 1) make it a hands-on experience 2) remove the mathematical calculations and make it practical. In the past, I had the luck of bringing a handful of my physics students with me to guide the elementary students through the concepts that they had learned over the course of the year. But in my new role as a Teaching and Learning Speciali
As a part of the Innovator's Mindset MOOC set up by George Couros, we have been given weekly prompts to consider. To be honest, this was a blog post I was drafting when I read the first prompt and realized it was perfectly timed. The prompt was as follows: “Change is an opportunity to do something amazing.” How are you embracing change to spur innovation in your own context? I believe that all great change begins with the why. Change can be something done to us or done by us. I pride myself to be an individual that doesn't wait to be told to change. I look at the landscape in front of me (in the form of feedback from students, administrators , and my own reflections) and try a new iteration in the hopes that it will be as George Couros states in The Innovator's Mindset " New and Better". It is always my hope that each iteration will be an innovation. Many times what is new is not always better. But, it is always a