This June, our entire staff was able to enjoy presentations from two colleagues representing the most recent participants in our Teacher in Review program. This opportunity, developed for Carolina Friends School by Assistant Head for Teaching and Learning Renee Prillaman, provides a way to deepen and enrich the art and science of teaching through a mentored, question-based action research project. Once an area of growth is identified, research is gathered from a variety of sources. A teaching strategy is then developed, implemented, and assessed.
Ahmed Selim (who goes by Selim), who teaches film and language arts in the Upper School, focused his project on examining how to go from transactional to transformational through creativity. His research led him to sources ranging from transpersonal psychology to Sufi teachings. In his work with students, he found that in moving beyond self-actualization to transcendence, a community must build a “container” together. That container holds a safe space where teachers and students alike are comfortable co-learning together. He cited the importance of a commitment by teachers to both continually work on oneself as an individual and to bring students to a sense of “safe uncertainty” that enables discovery and growth.
Matt Arnold teaches language arts and philosophy in the Upper School, and chose for his project to create a class on the methods of teaching for Upper School students interested in offering student-taught classes. In addition to concrete details like how to create lesson plans and activities, he and the students explored some of the more challenging aspects of how to bring flexibility to those plans that allow for meeting students where they are in their interests and understandings. Matt spoke to the important difference between teacher-centered work and student-centered work as a framework.
Both Selim and Matt began their projects during the 2019-2020 school year, and were forced not only to reimagine their teaching during the course of the pandemic but also their action research projects. The steadiness of the framework — as Matt described, “deliberate question plus deliberate data equals deliberate takeaways” — also embraces the Quaker idea that truth is continually revealed. Much as in teaching, the focus of the Teacher in Review process is on the journey to realization and growth.
Previous Projects
- Effective Use of Science Journals
- Student-Directed Learning Through Storytelling
- Making Algebra Relevant
- Student-Centered Learning
- Digital Portfolios Through Wikispaces
- Integrated Science & Storytelling
- Authentic Assessment Strategies
- Formal Assessment Through Digital Interaction
- Inviting Students to Ask Higher Order Questions
- Math Workshop to Support Achievement and Disposition
- Portfolio Assessment in The Early School
- Student Meta-Reflection on Art Portfolios
- Strategies for Teaching Modern Immigration
- Nature-Learning and Risk-Taking in Early Childhood
- Active Engagement in the Social Studies Classroom
- Teaching Young Children to Listen Deeply
- Teachers’ Use of Information from Children to Support Child-Parent Interactions
- Somatic Understandings to Inspire Lower School Children and Teachers