chapter 8 spreading learning!

I really like the thought of bringing in experts and outside help. Students love to have guest speakers and video conferences or IM chats with people who can legitimately answer their questions. Some ways to branch out include reaching out to parents or previous parents who can help, put stuff out o a blog, reaching through old networking connections. Finding people willing to help is only limited by what you're willing to put out there. The EAST initiative was a really interesting thing. To me it sounded like that was almost the baby of some progressive teaching and spread into what we look at now as common project based learning. A teacher who's kids had trouble being interested in learning got sucked into a project that garnered national and international attention. It was so great that other teachers wanted to implement this learning style and learned to apply it in their own classrooms. How exciting would that be to get that kind of recognition for something you thought was just a nice idea. That now we have even more opportunities than he had in 1997 is great every neat idea we can share immediately if we want! By the way, I was really touched by the story of the girl with dyslexia who started that conversation with the teacher in China. That, to me, is why it's important to sometimes let students lead. Students will be more than eager to start a project about something they are passionate for. That girl had dyslexia, no one cold really relate and she found a companion in this other teacher who also had dyslexia and it triggered her to type her own wiki to explain and give helpful tips to other people,e who have dyslexia. When the project we are working on needs help from some experts I think my first step would be my gym. We are doing health and nutrition and I could even go to the REC center and have a guest come in to talk about eating healthy and the right kinds of exercise. I also think that it would be nice to let my students take the lead a bit. I really like the idea of before an interview with an expert that the teacher talks about how to talk to kids with the expert, and what are appropriate questions for the expert. I think that it is crucial that you do that for a smooth communication.