Roadtrip Nation: Journeys of Self-Discovery

Roadtrip Nation is a public television series and grassroots movement that encourages young people to hit the road in search of interviews with leaders who have defined their own distinct routes through life. The search for eclectic individuals who have resisted pressures to conform and who have become successful by following their own paths is what drives Roadtrip Nation.  Check WGBY’s Schedule to learn when the series airs.

This remarkable movement documents these journeys of self-discovery in a free-spirited, adventurous series that encourages people all across the globe to move outside their comfort zones and explore the world.   Every summer, students set out  Green RVs to hear the stories of these fascinating people across the country.  Roadtrip Nation captures their experiences and shares them in this PBS documentary series.  You can watch full episodes and featured interviews on roadtripnation.com.

When you search “careers” at PBS LearningMedia, you’ll also find a multitude of resources such as Write Now! Career Writing Prompts: Speech Pathologist (Video, grades 6-10),  Choosing a STEM Career (Lesson Plan, grades 6-12) and Computer Game and Simulation Technology (Video, 9-12).

We’d love to hear about your experiences watching  Roadtrip Nation or searching among PBS LearningMedia’s 30,000+ resources.

Empowering Children: Independent Lens’ The Revolutionary Optimists

On Monday, June 17, at 10pm WGBY airs the documentary The Revolutionary Optimists about some of the poorest slums of Kolkata.  Amlan Ganguly, a lawyer-turned social entrepreneur, sows hope in the poorest neighborhoods of Calcutta by empowering children to become leaders in improving health and transforming their communities.  Preview.

Inspired by The Revolutionary Optimists, which profiles “The Daredevils” in one of Kolkata’s most notorious squatters’ colonies, Map Your World is a multi-platform project in development that puts the power of new technologies into the hands of young change agents, enabling them to map, track, and improve the health of their own communities and share their stories.

When you search subjects like  “children in poverty” on PBS LearningMedia, you’ll find hundreds of resources.  Here are just a few:

Protect Your Health and Environment  (Grades 3 – 4) In this media-rich self-paced lesson, students explore health hazards in their environment and learn how to make their environment safer.

Poverty (Grades: 6-12) shows children in unclean conditions and asks students to write a description of what they think life is like for these children.

Teens Fight for Toxic Waste Cleanup (Grades 9-12) Meet a student who successfully lobbied her state legislature about waste sites in her neighborhood in this video adapted from Earth Island Institute’s New Leaders Initiative.

Featured Educator Profile: Courtney Imbriglio — Keeping Current Keeps Her Going!

One of this year’s recipients of the Pioneer Valley Excellence in Teaching Awards, Courtney Imbriglio is a Title I reading teacher for Grades 5 & 6 at Butterfield School in Orange, MA.  We think you’ll hear her passion for and dedication to teaching and learning in her responses to the following questions we recently asked her.

 What support did you receive or wish you had received early in your teaching career?  When I first began in Orange, I taught in an inclusion classroom with a special education teacher and a paraprofessional with 13 students.  I learned a lot from the team of adults I worked with about how to differentiate instruction and meet the needs of all learners.

What keeps you enthusiastic about teaching, and where do you find your inspiration?  I really enjoy working with my students.  I love the innocence of childhood and I enjoy listening to students reason their way through problems as they gain knowledge and understanding.  I also find inspiration through professional development.  Keeping current keeps me going!  I love learning and passing along knowledge to staff members and students!

What is a favorite classroom resource (e.g., website, lesson, activity)? I use varied resources.  This year I have used Assistments and Scootpad, which are great web-based resources.  In addition, I have found Readworks.org to be quite a valuable tool.

If you could change just one thing in education today, what would it be?  I think standardized testing and measuring teacher impact with students’ scores is putting too much pressure on educators.  I’ve seen too many great teachers want to leave the field because of these demands.  Thought I do think there needs to be measures of teacher quality, I’m not sure this is the answer!

We’d also appreciate hearing how you, our readers, might respond to any of these questions.

Innovative Schools Share Ideas to Keep Kids Learning

By staff writers, eSchool News, May 23, 2013 – Failing 9th grade for the second year in row, A.J. Swan had accepted that he wasn’t going to graduate from his Vermont high school. He’d barely made it this far, after being held back in 7th grade.  It wasn’t that he wasn’t learning, he said, but he didn’t find what he was learning important and didn’t feel a need to write it down — as homework and papers — to show he knew it.  “It wasn’t like a good feeling,” he said of knowing that he wouldn’t get a high school diploma.

That was until the school tapped into the League of Innovative Schools and offered him some alternative ways to prove what he knew–by writing papers on topics he was interested in, taking assessments and enrolling in a hands-on learning environment at a technical school where he’s learned to work in video. He’s set to graduate this spring and wants to become a documentary filmmaker.

Read the entire blog by clicking here.

Tips to Stave off “Summer Slide”

Teachers, before students head off for the summer, you might want to call parents’ attention to some great resources recently shared on Edutopia, the George Lucas Education Foundation website.  Matt Davis, editorial assistant, June 4, 2013 writes:   Summer is here! But along with warmer weather, trips to the pool and the Fourth of July, comes a not-so-fun reality… the summer slide.

Too often students scowl at the idea of summer learning, but it doesn’t have to be that way. In fact, summer is the perfect time to dive into some fun, engaging learning activities.  Virtual field trips, check. Fiction writing, check. A summer of making, check.

For parents, we’ve rounded up some outside-the-box resources, as well as reading, math and writing activities, that will help counteract summer slide.

Read the entire blog and discover these resources by clicking here.

If you have any tips to share about the summer slide with our readers, please do!

“Imagine That – Enjoying Math?”

These are the words of 7^th grade math teacher, Bonnie Wareham, when describing her students almost unanimous agreement about enjoying her flipped classroom  iPad project, for which she received a 2012 Teacher Innovator Award . The annual Teacher Innovation Awards are sponsored by PBS LearningMedia and the Henry Ford.

For this pilot project, she and the class designed “Ladder of Success” together as “ a way for students to demonstrate their understanding of Common Core standards.”  She describes the program as a “joy” that allowed her to immediately review students work and give feedback, which then provided them with a process for  reviewing and revising their work before returning it for a final assessment.

You can read how this method transformed the classroom environment where students have endless options such as creating movies, picture collages, puppet shows, snapshots of written work and cartoons.  In addition to — and more important than – their  higher grades, Bonnie shares how  “students are able to explain their understanding in math language, work collaboratively, and are confident in their abilities. They are creating their own situations and then solving them.”

What do you think about flipped learning or this “Ladder of Success” pilot project?  What challenges and/or successes have you had teaching math?

Violent Weather – Good Topic for Summer Learning

Tornadoes, hurricanes, floods… In addition to all the recent rain, New England has had its share of more violent weather!  WGBY has 50 videos and DVDS devoted to these more violent aspects of our weather. Some of these programs cover historic events, such as big floods and hurricanes during the late 1930s, as well as more recent storms like Katrina in 2005.  Check out our lending library by going to our lending library site and entering keywords, such as hurricanes, floods or tornadoes. You may borrow up to three titles for a month, with the option to extend the loan period if necessary.