In Spring 2012, I conducted an independent study at Critical Explorers, as part of my graduate course work. I had previously studied with Eleanor Duckworth and Elizabeth Cavicchi, and when I began this study, I was captivated and confused in equal measure by critical exploration.
The Khan Academy’s “flipped classroom” model has received a huge amount of media attention in the past few years.
I teach at a school that requires letter grades. At the close of this past semester, while reading my seventh-grade students’ reflections, I was struck by this paragraph from a girl who was discussing her “improvement over time”….
Much curriculum tends to be static: It prescribes what students should notice and what they should think. How can educators create curriculum that changes as students and teachers engage it — curriculum that engages students and all their varied observations and ideas? …
Conventional wisdom holds that effective teachers write the objective of each lesson on the board before class so that the students are aware of what the teacher intends them to accomplish. …
Our first, three-day teacher workshop, “Critical Exploration in the Grade 4 – 12 Humanities Classroom: An Introduction,” held in August, was focused on poetry as well as on history. …
What does it really mean to be a researcher? When we assign students a research project, how can we make the experience as authentic and engaging as possible? …
(Creating Reconstructions) The primary texts of ancient history, even in translation, can be difficult for students to read and comprehend. When writing styles, vocabularies, or cultural references have changed, primary documents only a few centuries or decades old can seem almost as inaccessible. How can we help students make sense of these sources? …
(Developing Characters) Here at Critical Explorers, we’ve temporarily paused work on publishing to the website the remaining sections of the Slavery and Reconstruction resources in order to take advantage of an opportunity further to develop our soon-to-be-published Ancient Greece investigation. …
Sometimes I’m lucky enough to overhear a conversation that fits a question I’ve been carrying around. Maybe due to my sense of murkiness on the topic, I’m drawn to listen but reluctant to join. If I’m really lucky, the conversation helps clarify my thinking…