Friday, April 04, 2008

Seminar on Teaching and Learning

Today's luncheon Seminar on Learning and Teaching followed up on our summer faculty read - Daniel Pink's A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future. Art teacher Belle Struck talked about what she did in her freshmen classes to get her students to shift between the hemispheres in their brains. As teachers walked into the Bragdon Reading Room, their eyes widened as they saw all the supplies awaiting them. We did countour profile drawings (gaze upon a person and without looking at the paper or lifting the charcoal, draw them in 30 seconds,) folded envelopes from hand painted papers donated by their freshmen creators, colored squares to be fitted into a giant quilt, and ended with more profiling. We display some of the freshmen projects in the library and relished the opportunity of trying them for ourselves. And as always, these seminars are wonderful opportunities to learn new skills or absorb new ideas with colleagues during a designated period of time (meaning NO interruptions!)

We shall not be blogging the beginning of next week. Jen and I are attending Computers in Libraries and decided not to take our laptops. As I write that it seems an odd thing to do. But, we are going to absorb ideas and contemplate their implementation without actually starting the process. There is so little time during the school day for reflection with a colleague and we are consciously taking time for it during this conference. We will be returning in time for Common Book next Thursday.

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