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[quote=Anonymous]This article may be of interest to you

St ANdrews praised for innovative educational approach

(article in potomac almanac)

By Marilyn Campbell
The Almanac
A
 national education expert recently recognized a Potomac school
for its innovative approach to teaching students.
Author, researcher and education blogger Grant Lichtman visited St. Andrew’s Episcopal
School’s Center for
Transformative
Teaching and
Learning (CTTL)
earlier this month
as part of a national tour of
schools in search of
cutting-edge approaches to education.
Glenn Whitman,
dean of studies and
CTTL’s director,
said CTTL, which is partnered with
Johns Hopkins University’s
neuroeducation program, is the
research and development arm of
St. Andrews: “The center’s focus
is on bringing the most current
research on educational neuroscience — which is cognitive science, developmental psychology
and education — to each of our
teachers.
“Our teachers are thinking about
the brain and the mind of each student as they design their classes
and develop their lessons for the
whole class,” he added.
Teachers at St. Andrew’s also
have on-going dialogues with students about who they are as learners: “We ask students all the time
‘How are you going to approach
this test or this research paper?’”
he said. “Some of our best examples come around helping kids
develop appropriate study strategies for the various types of assessments we give.” Teachers say the
approach is making a difference.
“It sounds really obvious, but
students aren’t learning if I am not
teaching the way
their brains work,”
said history teacher
Amanda Freeman.
“We learn more about
how they learn,
what’s successful and
what study strategies
they put in place.
One of the things I’ve
… started doing is
taking walks with my
students. We’ll go on
a short walk and it’s
amazing how they come back refreshed and ready to learn.”
Susheela Robinson, head of English at St. Andrew’s, added:
“Wherever I look, I see innovative
teaching. … Just this week … I
witnessed teenage boys wearing
suits because they were running a
‘town hall’ meeting, and they took
it very seriously. In another room,
students are Skyping grandparents
in Lebanon for a health project.
“[I]n 7th grade English, we reexamine the structure and purpose
of a well-written paragraph: Many
of my students are gifted with expressive language, and they inherently know how sentences need to
flow together, but purposeful atSt. Andrew’s Praised for Innovative Educational Approach
National education writer and researcher highlights
Center for Transformative Teaching and Learning.
“We very deliberately think about
the social and emotional aspects of
learning. We talk to the students a
lot about who they are as learners.”
— Glenn Whitman, director of the Center for Transformative Teaching and Learning at St. Andrew’s
Episcopal School in Potomac.
tention to each part of a paragraph
— from the topic sentence, to examples for support, to a closing
line or clincher, is important to
all.” According to Whitman, CTTL
continues to re-evaluate itself and
regularly updates teachers on the
most current research and ideas
about educational neuroscience.
“Our work targets enhancing the
instructional practice of great
teachers to make them exceptional
teachers using brain research,” he
said, “but the true beneficiaries of
the work are our students.inn[/quote]

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