RAFT Hands-On Education

Thanksgiving is just around the corner, and this is an excellent time in the school year to take a moment and reflect on the teachers and students for whom you are grateful! Thanksgiving is a holiday that reminds us to stop and think about the people in our lives who have made a significant impression, who have inspired us to go further, and who have helped you embrace new challenges without fear of failure! In many ways, these people are the teachers and students we’ve met in our lives, which includes YOU, our devoted RAFT educators! Take time to think about this: who are the teachers and students you’re grateful for? To me, in a way, we are all teachers in some capacity when we care about another person and want to help them positively learn something. I remember my kinder teacher, Ms. Lamb, and my second-grade teacher, Mrs. Turturici, who encouraged a timid little girl to be whatever she wanted to be. And that little girl was me! I thank them for their patience and persistence...

By Michael Rosenberg, Teacher, Stratford School  There are few professions outside of teaching that can empathize with the struggle of being an educator. As a teacher, our days in the classroom can be a physical and mental roller coaster. Then at day’s end, stacks of papers await our pen and stickers, and Bay Area traffic awaits our draining commute home. Facing these issues, the recent addition of a child, and a move far from my campus have increased my need to find balance. However, wrestling with a reasonable balance of work and personal life has been a struggle for most of my career.   Knowing that I had to restructure my life to fit my new struggles, I decided to reevaluate my work and personal life balance. I began this process by first mapping my day which included commute time to and from work, prep-time, and hours spent at home. By experimenting with my commute to work, I found that leaving fifteen minutes earlier allowed me to avoid most of the traffic...

Last week 1,800 excited teachers descended on Palm Springs for the 2013 CSTA science conference. Every session focused on the Next Generation Science Standards was packed!  I learned volumes listening as teachers shared questions and ideas. I heard very few "why" questions - everyone understands why NGSS is being implemented.  Most of the questions I heard were " how ".  Conference attendees wanted practical tools to launch NGSS in their classrooms. During he RAFT session, I was honored to present to a standing-room-only crowd. Amazingly, the eager audience built four RAFT kits in under one hour. In addition to asking questions, teachers shared solutions of their own. They described creative ways to apply RAFT-style learning in their classrooms. Project-based learning, inquiry-based instruction, and design challenge thinking are at the forefront now.  The teachers were answering the "how" question for themselves! At the conference, it was also intere...