7:30 Breakfast
8:15 Lunar lander and rover challenge
10:30-12:30 Free time. Yes, free time!!
12:30-1:00 Lunch
1:00-2:30 Rocket Launch
2::30-4:30 Walter filtration challenge
4:30-6:30 Lunar Mission
6:30 Dinner
7:30 Exchanging gifts and pins
Today's Schedule: 7:30 Breakfast 8:15 Lunar lander and rover challenge 10:30-12:30 Free time. Yes, free time!! 12:30-1:00 Lunch 1:00-2:30 Rocket Launch 2::30-4:30 Walter filtration challenge 4:30-6:30 Lunar Mission 6:30 Dinner 7:30 Exchanging gifts and pins
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As usual, an early breakfast at 7:30. 8:15: Water challenge. This included zip lining from a helicopter to the water below, escaping a helicopter that went down in the water, and a water rescue. 10:30: Shuttle Mission. Our crew had to launch a shuttle, dock it with the International Space Station, and then bring it safely to Earthy. 12:00 Lunch 1:00 Overview of our next mission, the Orion Mission, a lunar mission from the future. I will be the pilot for this one! 2:30 Rocket Building 4:30 Tour of Saturn 5 Hall and Museum 5:30 Dinner 6:30 Debrief of our Shuttle Mission 7:30 Training for the Orion Mission 9:15 Back to the dorm, exhausted, but feeling the power of teamwork today! 7:30: Breakfast 8:30: STEM Challenge: Designing a heat shield for an egg using limited materials 10:45 Our egg did not survive the challenge! 11:00 Training for our shuttle mission which will be tomorrow morning. 12:30 Lunch 1:00 Low Ropes Course-I have to say that my team rocked both challenges! 3:00 Session learning about the future of space travel through NASA and other commercial options. 5:00-8:00 Dinner under the Saturn 5 Rocket with the Du Midi Ladies from Huntsville. They are a service organization and hosted our dinner. Thanks to one of the members at my table, a transplant from Andover, Massachusetts, I got to talk about the Red Sox! And, I ate catfish for the first time. 8:00 Back to the dorm to get ready for a big day tomorrow: zip line from a high platform into the water and our Space Shuttle Mission! Go Team Kibo!!! When they mentioned long days at Space Camp, they meant it. We left the dorm at 7 am this morning and just got back. Therefore, I will be just posting a brief schedule for the day and some pictures. Hope it gives you a glimpse of our experience in Huntsville, Alabama. Enjoy! Day 1 7:00 Breakfast and Overview of Space Camp 8:30 Break into teams for our missions this week. My team is Kibo, which means hope. Our team includes people from Belgium, Bangladesh, Germany, Norway and the United States. 9:00 Ice Breaker Activities 10:00 Overview of the Space Shuttle program. 11:00 Tour of the Space Camp facilities 11:30 Designing our mission patch for Team Kibo. 12:30 Lunch 1:15 Rehearsal for Opening Ceremonies 2:30 Back to dorm to change into costume representing our states. In case you can't figure it out, I am the West Quoddy Lighthouse in Lubec. 4:00 Back to main campus for pictures . 5:30-7:45 Opening Ceremonies, which included introductions of State Teachers of the Year in their costume, and presentations from the international teams. 8:00-9:00 Dinner under the Saturn 5 rocket. It’s two days before I head to Space Camp in Huntsville, Alabama. As I get ready for my adventure I am reflecting on the assistance I have received throughout the entire Maine Teacher of the Year journey. Support has come from all corners of the state, and I am grateful every time someone reaches out to help. First, Educate Maine has been an amazing organization to work with this year. Thank you to Tanna, Dolly, and Nicole for supporting my efforts and valuing the importance of recognizing teachers. To the staff at King Middle, kudos to you. All year long you have “had my back” in so many ways: covering my class when I need to attend an event, taking my detention duties, reading my blog, coming to events I hosted, and cheering for me all the way.
I feel blessed to have a supportive family and network of friends. Just this weekend, as the World Cup Final was airing, two friends were helping me create a costume that represents Maine. This costume will be worn at Space Camp as the State Teachers of the Year and International Teachers participate in a parade of states and countries. At home, my husband has kept an eye on my mother and continued with those summer projects as I have been packing and unpacking my suitcase. Just yesterday a package arrived from Maine Balsam Fir Products and they generously donated gifts for each of the teachers I will be working with in Huntsville. Thank you everyone who is following my journey via this blog. My understanding is that the days are full and long at Space Camp, so I will do my best to at least post some pictures during the week. A more thorough post will appear when I return. May the Force be with me this week! It is the end of June and I said goodbye to my seventh grade students on Friday. It was bittersweet, as usual. These students have followed my 2014 Maine Teacher of the Year journey from the start. Some of the students accompanied me on my visit to the Hall of Flags in Augusta. Others served on my student panel during the site visit. Still others volunteered to be greeters and tour guides on that special day. All of them showed the visiting educators what a special place we have at King Middle School. One goal I had going into this experience was to share it with my education community, and the notes I received from the students on the last day let me know that they embraced the experience, as well. On Thursday we headed to the beach and the power of the World Cup was clear. Typically, we have to drag the students out of the water to eat lunch and give the lifeguard a break, but about 40 students took advantage of the wide beach and the hard sand to engage in a co-ed game of soccer. They know the countries, the players, and the records of the teams competing in Brazil. The World Cup has captured our hearts this June. After returning from the beach, the Windsor-7 teachers shared a slide show of all of the photos we have taken the last two years. After forty-five minutes filled with laughter and sniffles, one students summed up the emotions with the quote of the day: "We sure have come a long way, Mrs. MacDonald." Indeed. While June was a time to tie up the learning and the community connections at King, it was also a time to explore as Maine Teacher of the Year. Last week I spent two days in Washington County celebrating Ann Luginbuhl's selection as the Washington County Teacher of the Year. The shift in the Maine Teacher of the Year program, under the guidance of Educate Maine, has strengthened the mission of the program - honoring teacher ambassadors who represent their communities and teacher colleagues. It is clear that Ann has a grasp of the strengths and challenges of schools and educators in her county. She is in the best position to make local connections and build the relationships necessary to bring about change in the Washington County education community. It was a pleasure visiting the area and meeting with community leaders. I hope to be back in the near future in the role of tourist! I want to thank the Portland SeaDogs and UNUM for a great night on June 6th. The weather was perfect for an evening of fun and celebration. Teachers from all over the state were honored at the Teachers Hall of Fame Starting Nine event sponsored by UNUM and the Portland SeaDogs. I was the team's manager! We each got to throw out a "first pitch" and spent time in the Yaz box. Thank you, UNUM and the SeaDogs. for honoring teachers in such an enjoyable way. Finally, thank you to Mike Dixon, Superintendent Caulk and Principal Marcia Gendrom for inviting me to participate in the celebration of National Summer Learning Day at East End Community School. It was clear from the moment I walked into the lobby that this school is cultivating a culture of learning. The students begin learning before the official start of the day through a program called Rise and Shine. Activities are offered that make students want to race to school each morning. At an assembly, we focused on the importance of keeping that energy and focus on learning during the summer months. Portland ConnectED has certainly come through for the students of Portland this summer. Thank you for supporting, in a very specific and effective way, the message that the teachers of Portland deliver every day about the power of learning. Next up, I head to Washington DC for a conference on education policy. On July 18th it's off to Huntsville, Alabama, for a week at Space Camp! July wraps up with a day of oral presentations from the eight semi-finalists for the 2015 Maine Teacher of the Year. Summer is here - time to keep on learning!!! 21st Century Skills I spent time last week thinking about 21st Century Skills. Portland Superintendent Manny Caulk asked me to co-host his community book club that was held this past week at Longfellow Books. The selection was 21st Century Skills: Learning for Life in Our Times by Bernie Trilling and Charles Fadel. The conversation focused on teaching life and career skills such as flexibility, initiative, creativity, computer and media literacy, and cross-cultural interactions. Most in the group seemed to agree that these skills were important in today’s job market. Yet, at about the same time, Governor LePage and the Department of Education released it’s now yearly report card for Maine’s schools. These report card grades are based solely on math and reading scores on the state-wide fall assessment, the NECAP. So, herein lies the problem. While those in the business world tell us that our students need to be flexible, creative, and independent, we do not measure those areas of student achievement. And teachers understandably feel the pressure to focus their instruction on what is being assessed and "graded" by our state. Is our state saying that math and reading scores are the only ways to measure a student’s progress towards college and career readiness? Should teachers take the time to develop these 21st century skills with their students when their evaluations will soon be tied to data focused on reading and math? Where is the balance? Fortunately, teachers know that it is ALL important. Skilled educators find a way to blend the content knowledge and skills with life skills-at least the life skills we can currently identify that will be important in the future. That is why project-based learning is gaining such wide-spread attention and why Expeditionary Learning is one approach to this balance. So it was a fitting end to the week when my students presented their work for the expedition Small Acts of Courage, focused on the Civil Rights Movement. This was a project that combined reading, writing, art, interviewing, collaboration skills, speaking skills , cross-cultural interactions, computer literacy skills, and critical thinking. This week they shared the stories of the local citizens they interviewed in a stage presentation and in five volumes of oral histories. And most importantly, they had an authentic audience-their interviewees. I couldn’t be more proud of the work these students completed. I also couldn’t be more proud of my teaching team and my school. We understand that in today’s world, we have to provide a balance of content and life skills. Yes, we risk getting a “C” from the state on our school report card. But as I watched the presentation this week, completely student-run, I knew that these young people had grown in so many ways, both academically and personally, and they were all closer to being career and college ready. They are knowledgable, confident seventh-graders who can independently take an idea from conception to completion. Everyone made it to the top of the mountain. They reminded me to be steadfast in my commitment to providing the critical connection between content and life skills each and every day. Thank you, Windsor-7 students. As usual, you continue to help me grow professionally and personally. Did anyone notice that Teacher Appreciation Week seemed to get a bit more attention this year? Perhaps it is because I am a new Twitter addict where teachers were getting a lot of attention, or maybe it was the advertising I received from Talbots and Subway honoring educators with discounts. Maybe it was the Thank a Teacher Starbucks card I received from a student, or the luncheon served at our school. Whatever is happening, I hope the momentum and energy around honoring teachers continues. On May 6th, Teacher Appreciation Day, I had the unique privilege of introducing the 2014 County Teachers of the Year in the Hall of Flags at our state capitol for the first time. I met them the evening before as we gathered for dinner and some time to share backgrounds and ideas. I have to say that I am ecstatic about the new process that Educate Maine has developed for this program. And while there may be a few tweaks along the way, making sure that teachers from each county are represented is such an important step forward. In addition, there is so much work to do!!! Unlike some states, the Maine Teacher of the Year is NOT on sabbatical and s/he is juggling the year of service with a full class load. So I want to officially welcome the new members to their year of service. I look forward to working with all of you until December, when one of the sixteen will receive a New Year’s Eve call from me. In the meantime, I celebrate your energy, your knowledge about teaching and learning, and I look forward to your leadership around the state. Bravo! Meet these teacher ambassadors: http://www.mainetoy.org You might think it was difficult returning from the amazing Washington Recognition Week and get back to my “normal” routine at King MIddle School. And in many ways, you would be right. But not for the reasons that you might imagine. My students welcomed me back with a poster and congratulatory notes. Teachers couldn’t wait to stop by my room to get details. The district and school posted information about my week on the websites. In my brain, I completely understand that this experience is designed to focus on one teacher from each state as a representative of excellent teaching of that state, but there are times when this is a challenge.
As I headed into King at 7:15 am the following Monday, I looked around to find educators who kept an extra eye on my students while I was absent. Several made the logistical arrangements that allowed my students to watch me in the White House live via the internet. They kept parents informed and plans for our Celebration of Learning moving ahead. Earlier in the process, others had written recommendations for my portfolio, given me feedback on my writing, and listened to me practice the oral presentation that I delivered as a finalist, which ultimately led to my selection as the 2014 Maine Teacher of the Year. And all around me at King and in Maine are teachers who dedicate each day to providing students with a safe, nurturing and challenging academic experience. So as the “Why me?” thought continues to circulate in my mind, I want to share with everyone that it was a privilege to represent you and the teaching profession. While events such as these are extended to a few of us each year, the 54 honorees realize that the attention and publicity offers us the opportunity and responsibility to elevate the teaching profession. After spending a week with the 53 other State Teachers of the Year, and the newly selected National Teacher of the Year, Sean McComb, I can assure you that during the remainder of our year of service we all cherish and relish the chance to shine a light on teachers and teaching! |