Mar. 13, 2020 -- Teachers don't exist in a bubble; They do some of their work best when they collaborate with one another and take advantage of the many community resources available to them. Teachers in CH-UH are lucky to have access to world class museums, and those museums are lucky to have access to CH-UH teachers.
Sean Sullivan, the Science and Engineering teacher at Gearity Professional Development School, is a member of the Cleveland Museum of Natural History’s
Educator Resource Center. Recently, Sean developed a curriculum that is being piloted in CH-UH and locations in Cleveland before being made available to the wider public. The project even has a connections to the Smithsonian.
The Museum has been conducting a biocube project called
ProtectCLE (Cleveland’s Living Environment) and, with the help of a grant from the Ohio Lottery, hired Sean Sullivan to design the accompanying curriculum and correlating kit for grades 3 through 5. With ProtectCLE, students receive a biocube which they place outdoors on their school’s property to observe and record their own natural habitat. The data students gather can then be shared with the Smithsonian through their iNaturalist program.
“Gearity is one of a few elementary schools doing this,” said Mr. Sullivan, who meets with each class in his building twice each week for a 40-minute science lab. “It’s very cool.”
Noble Elementary's experience with biocubes, including a more detailed description of what they are and how they work, can also be found highlighted
here.