Here’s a great video from our coverage of Principals’ Academy held Thursday at Douglass High School. (Check out the blog post below.) Kudos to our intern, Lyntoria Newton, who serves as the executive producer of this video in collaboration with our media production team of Scott King and Armon Moore.
Tiedra Hutchings, Crim Open Campus’ 2010-2011 Teacher of the Year, is attending the HistoryMakers 2010 National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Summer Institute on African American Political History, through July 31. Hutchings was the only teacher in Georgia to be awarded the NEH scholarship for The HistoryMakers Education Institute, as well as being one out of 25 in the nation to win also. But this isn’t the only award the APS teacher has won lately. Hutchings, who has been teaching for 12 years, is also a semifinalist for APS’ Teacher of the Year. And last year, Hutchings received a Fund for Teachers grant. With this grant she and colleague Reosha Bush created a research project called “Tracing the Origin of Georgia.” Hutchings traveled to London and Bush traveled to Savannah to discover everything they could about James Oglethorpe, the founder of the state of Georgia.
Hutchings seems to have a phenomenal thirst for knowledge beyond just teaching. “What excites me the most is that I will be among an elite group of scholars from around the world who have a passion for learning how to incorporate the wide gap between what scholars of African-American history have documented and what is currently being taught in American history and civics courses,” Hutchings said. Hutchings’ obvious enthusiasm and understanding of history is something that she hopes the HistoryMakers Institute will help her convey to her students. “I want to use this new found information in periods through Georgia history where African Americans played key roles in the political movements of this nation,” she said. Hutchings wants to incorporate African-American history through oral presentations, thinking maps, interactive videos and many other activities.
Hutchings and the group will gather for four weeks at the HistoryMakers Summer Institute in Chicago to learn about black political history as it relates to the election of Barack Obama as U.S. president, and learn ways to add this new era into their curriculum. Hutchings says she can’t wait for her students to “open their minds to exploring more about African-American political history as it relates to the development of Georgia.”
Four Atlanta Public Schools teachers have earned Master Teacher Certification from the Georgia Professional Standards Commission in 2010. They are Emily Boatright (Inman Middle, profiled here), Endia Way (Perkerson Elementary), TaiShara Twyman (Dobbs Elementary) and Wendy Baker (Inman Middle). To earn the Master Teacher Certification, candidates must have at least three years experience in the classroom on a Georgia Clear Renewal Certificate and demonstrate evidence linking their classroom instruction to student achievement and academic progress. Master Teachers serve as mentors and coaches for other teachers and are invited to attend conferences and seminars throughout the year as the voice of Georgia educators.
Check out this previously posted video of Wendy Baker with student and award-winning poet Tessa Szalkowski.
UPDATES: Watch video of a morning session here. Watch video of Young Middle orchestra teacher Robert Jeffrey and a student here.
More than 120 students and nearly 30 teachers throughout Atlanta Public Schools have taken up residence, almost literally, at the Woodruff Arts Center for a month of intense study. The second-annual Middle School and High School Summer Academy for the Arts and Sciences allows gifted and talented students to work in a more creative learning environment while gifted-endorsement candidate teachers to take the next step in their certification process.
The program keeps everyone on their toes. Students spend the first two weeks taking classes in the morning and then spend the afternoon tapping into visual- or performing-arts classes. The gifted-endorsement candidates spend the first week observing master teachers, and then the endorsement candidates take it from there.
All of this learning and instruction, in one of the best cultural arts settings in the nation, helps Atlanta Public Schools take arts education to the next level. APS has partnered with the Woodruff Arts Center to establish the Atlanta Studio Conservatory, a fine-arts school that will be housed in the planned Woodruff complex expansion for the 2011-2012 school year. APS and the Woodruff signed a “new project memorandum” for the school back in early May.
“We want to make it possible for our students to be a position in which, when they graduate from high school, they will already have had a conservatory atmosphere in the arts,” explained APS Fine Arts Director Cynthia Terry. “This way, when they get to a performing-arts college or conservatory, they won’t need to take developmental courses. They’ll be better prepared.”
Program Coordinator Althea Bolton can feel the excitement among the students, especially those who are returning for their second year. “The excitement is about not being in a traditional classroom setting,” said Bolton, who pointed to a Thursday morning pre-lecture from members of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra followed by an ASO rehearsal. “They don’t get this in a normal classroom setting. The key piece to this program is for the students to realize, if they’re going to be true artists, they need to put in the time to perfect their craft. And being in this atmosphere helps acclimate them to that idea.”
Check out the classes the students are taking, at the jump …
Not to get all nostalgic or anything, but when we started Talk Up APS toward the end of last summer, one of the first things we did was serve up a series of essays from the Atlanta Fund for Teachers (through the Atlanta Education Fund) winners who wrote about their summer experiences. The essays were a huge hit, and underscored how our APS teachers are at their best when they’re in a constant state of professional development.
So we’re excited to end the 2009-10 school year and look toward the summer with this look at what this year’s crop of Atlanta Fund for Teachers recipients will be doing this summer. We’ll check back in with them from time to time, and get their impressions on what we’re sure will be enriching and fun adventures. (Check out this link for a sampling of those essays.)
Read about the teachers and their plans at the jump…
Congratulations to Parkside Elementary’s Teacher of the Year, Ronnie Thomas, who recently earned a scholarship to attend the 2010 Honeywell Educators @ Space Academy (HE@SA) program this June. Here’s his own take on this experience …
“I was reminded while attending the High Museum Leonardo Da Vinci Math and Science Professional Development that minorities and females are extremely underrepresented in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) related careers. The thought stayed with me while attending the Mickelson Exxon Mobil Teacher Academy later that summer in New Orleans, where we engaged in ways to integrate math and science skills in the classroom. At the start of the 2010 academic year I led fundraising projects in effort to send students to space camp where they would gain insight to possible career ideas. I also sponsored our school’s first robotics team and the 20 students from grades 2-5 of various ethnic, economic and gender backgrounds showed great interest in the STEM-related skills they were introduced to. … (More at the jump.)
Megan Dosmann, a first-grade teacher at Toomer Elementary School, joined an Earthwatch Institute research team for a 13-day expedition in Nova Scotia to help scientists understand how the mammals of Nova Scotia are affected by climate change. Megan’s expedition was sponsored by a grant from HSBC in the Community (USA) Inc. From March 13 – 27, Megan joined four other Earthwatch volunteers from the United States, the United Kingdom and Japan for the “Mammals of Nova Scotia” project. Two of the volunteers were teachers also sponsored through the Live From the Field Fellowship. The research team was led by Dr. Chris Newman and Dr. Christina Buesching of Oxford University.
“I came home from my Earthwatch expedition feeling a whole new sense of connection to the natural world, a fresh understanding of climate change and the need to act now, and a renewed enthusiasm for the way I teach science to my students,” said Dosmann.
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