HASTI/Pollinator Project

Tim Gibb (who owns the barn where I keep Abby) is  a Purdue University entomology professor. About two years ago, he received a significant grant from the National Science Foundation to create a free curriculum for all high schools in Indiana. Called the Purdue Pollinator Project, it is designed to raise awareness and educate students about the need to protect our state's pollinators.

The high school curriculum for the Purdue Pollinator Project was introduced at HASTI (Hoosier Association of Science teachers, Inc.) in Indianapolis yesterday.

Since I am writing the elementary curriculum which should be rolled out next year, I went along to watch and to see how the high school lessons compared to mine.

Craig came with me - I had had four (yes, FOUR!) migraine headaches Sunday and then one that morning. (I had another after we got home.) He drove, just in case I got sick on the road.

 There was good attendance and I felt the presentation went well.

The lessons were outlined and a brief explanation given about each one.

Purdue's Envision Center had created some games. I though the one titled "The Plight of the Foraging Bumblebee" would work well for elementary kids - it was an interactive game where you could fly the honeybee all over the countryside with the goal to make it back to the hive with pollen.

Tim was there (he is the one who wrote the grant for Purdue) and was handing out flyers for the summer seminars.

Everything is being made available to teachers for free, even attending the seminars.

I have been splitting my time between working on the elementary curriculum and writing the history of Great Lakes Congress, the longest running model horse club which is celebrating its 35th anniversary this year. I will polish the final draft of that today and send it to the printer, and then begin devoting all my writing time to the Pollinator Project.

It's a good thing I like to write!

Summer for a Teacher Means...

Summer for a teacher means sleeping in, lazy days kicking around the house, and lunch with friends, right? WRONG!!

It means working from home, attending conferences, and writing curriculum. (And just maybe some down time if you are lucky.)

I have many school-related things going this summer, and it's been busy! Here's what I've done just the first three weeks school has been out for summer. (Besides going back to school and closing down my classroom.)

1) I am working with the Indiana Department of Education (IDOE) to rewrite/realign the 4th Grade Science ISTEP+, the big assessment the state gives students annually.

I had to sign a confidentiality agreement so I can't post photos of the work we're doing, but here's a photo I took for my own files of the reimbursement form I sent in to the IDOE. (When I agreed to serve on the committee, I had no idea that we were going to be paid. I just wanted to have a say in what was on the test. Being paid was an unexpected bonus.)

There are four other teachers and a boatload of IDOE and Pearson (the test vendor) folks working together to redo the 2018-2019 ISTEP+.

2) I attended the IGNITE Tech conference that was held in Lafayette. 

It's geared toward integrating technology into our classrooms, and since I am going one-to-one with Chromebooks in August, I have a lot to learn.

 The classes I took reflect the gaps in my own knowledge that I wanted to fill.


3) I am writing the Elementary Curriculum for a project called "Pollinator Protectors" for Tim.

When not at the barn or church, Tim is a professor of Entymology at Purdue. He received a grant from the National Science Foundation to write a two year program to get elementary, middle, and high school students involved in protecting the insects that are pollinators and connected to our food sources.

This opportunity for me came about as he and I were talking over the fence at the barn one Saturday in May. I mentioned that I was working with the IDOE on the ISTEP+ and Tim shared his project with me. One thing led to another and I am now working with him.

4) The IDOE has also asked me to work on rewriting the ISTAR, the test that is given to students who have disabilities and need a test that assesses the essentials of the standards and is simpler and more basic.

So far, all our meetings have been online webinars. For me, that means two computers and my phone to attend!

There are five Special Ed teachers on the committee and two General Education teachers plus people from the IDOE and Pearson. To prepare, I went to the four teachers at my school who work in Special Education and asked for their input as to what changes they'd like to see made to the ISTAR. 

Working on the ISTAR been even more challenging for me than working on the ISTEP+ because there are three tiers of the ISTAR (students are placed on the tier best suited for their cognitive abilities) and we have to write for each tier - triple the work of the ISTEP+! 

5) I attended a SLED workshop (Science Learning through Engineering Design - the field of education sure loves its acronyms!) Just like Tim's Pollinator Protectors grant, SLED came about through a grant from the National Science Foundation. I became SLED trained a few years ago, and was asked to attend this workshop for teachers new to SLED as a support to the Hershey teachers. 

 Linda Faust and Therese Comery, two of my colleagues, work on a design project.

Another SLED trained friend, Aaron Hamilton, shared how he integrates SLED into his Science curriculum.

Still left to do this summer is a project on better aligning my teaching of grammar and English conventions for my own classroom. It is a personal goal to improve there. I'd like to tweak my writing curriculum, too. But those are things I am doing at home on my own.

A teacher's work (like a mom's) is never done!