Feb. 14, 2018 (Explore Member Magazine) -- Sean Sullivan is the Science and Engineering teacher at Gearity Professional Development School in the Cleveland Heights-University Heights School District, as well as a member of the Museum’s Educator Resource Center (ERC). Gearity is a STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) school that’s all about hands-on, inquiry-based learning that is focused on giving its students the opportunities to form their own hypotheses, test theories, and learn from their mistakes as much as their successes. Mr. Sullivan credits his membership to the Educator Resource Center, and the materials the ERC gives to his students, as being a large part of their success.
“The exhibits we get from the ERC give the students an opportunity to see animals close-up in a way that they normally wouldn’t,” Mr. Sullivan says. “They get to self-correct some misconceptions that we see. For example, I’ve had students who didn’t understand birds were covered in feathers. They thought that birds were covered in fur. But, as they see the animals up close, they could differentiate between the two body coverings.”
Video interview: