Last fall, Teaching Channel — an initiative to videotape inspiring teachers giving challenging lessons, then put the results on TV and the web — came to Westport.
Over a dozen Staples and middle school teachers — in math, science and English — were taped. The 1st lesson has been posted, and is drawing rave reviews.
Ali Krubski — a young Staples biology instructor — is shown teaching 9th graders how to design and conduct a lab that examines carbon cycling.
Pretty standard stuff — unless you’re a biologist — but Krubski makes it sing. Rather than “teaching” the lab, she encourages students to think about science, think critically, collaborate and communicate.
It’s exactly what Teaching Channel — whose tagline is “Inspired Teaching. Inspiring Classrooms” — hopes to highlight. The idea is for educators across America — the world, even — to click on the 5-minute video, get ideas and resources, adapt lesson plans, and maybe even chat online with Krubski and other biology teachers.
That’s already happening. And, according to Dr. A.J. Scheetz, it’s exactly where education should be headed.
“Getting students to think about science as an active process — not just a series of steps in a textbook or worksheet — is really important,” says Westport’s science department chair, grades 6-12.
“Students need to develop their own procedures and questions, then use the information they get from their labs to support their ideas. That’s a change in emphasis from a lot of science classes.”
It’s a change Ali Krubski embraces. And a change that — thanks to modern technology — teachers everywhere can see, and emulate.
(Click here to see Ali Krubski’s Teaching Channel video.)
