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Forty years ago, on balmy evenings, first grade teacher Virginia Meecham could be seen tooling her way through the streets of North Miami in her shiny sedan. She tried to visit as many of her students' homes as possible. When Mrs. Meecham taught first grade, 600 students attended W. J. Bryan Elementary in North Miami. Now there are about 1700. "Today, special Visiting Teachers make home visits," says Susie Morton, who has taught at Bryan for the last 25 years, "but they are overwhelmed by the numbers. There's also the language problem." I teach at the Academic Resource Center for gifted students in Tallahassee. Each semester our teachers provide fresh, differentiated curricula which address our students' special needs, abilities, and interests. As the environmental studies teacher, I create thematic curricula which encourage students to consider the interconnectedness of life. This semester, in my "Jaws and Claws" class, students are studying birds of prey and bears -- both perched at the top of the food chain, both respected, loved, feared, and misunderstood. In the classroom, students observed eye-to-eye, live, permanently disabled hawks and falcons then wrote deeply moving poems. We used radiotelemetry equipment borrowed from the Florida Game & Fresh Water Fish Commission, to track a (stuffed) bear. We studied anatomy, special adaptations, migration patterns, and survival problems. On the Internet, students tracked the migration of ospreys with biologists at the Minnesota Raptor Center and visited the Hawk Mountain web site where they identified migrating species in a competitive virtual birding game. Activities designed for gifted students should promote self-directed learning and growth, so each student is encouraged to investigate a relevant issue which excites them -- something they would like to learn more about, then develop a creative product based on their study. Because the two hours and twenty minutes we spend together each week zooms by like (forgive me) a peregrine falcon, I have developed a home page for my students and their parents. On my "Wild Ideas" web site, students can continue activities begun in the classroom or explore subjects in greater depth. Students become published writers when I include their poems and stories on my Nature Writing link. This semester, I plan to use our school's digital camera to photograph student projects for my home page. To keep parents informed, I have included information about assignments and field trips. On my web site, both students and their parents can e-mail me and other naturalists or scientists. Yes, times have changed. But that doesn't mean teachers can't still make home visits. |
