Today we had another learning festival! We woke up bright and early this morning to head over to our teaching location. For the past two learning festivals, we've been a bit short on setup time, so we tried to wake up and head over with lots of time to spare.
Today we taught with the St. Louis Homeschool Connection Group. We got kids from all around St Louis with some connections to homeschooling. In Edgardo and my first class of the day, we got a bunch of elementary school kids. Though I've taught a bunch in my years at MIT, this was the first time I was really teaching elementary schoolers.
Though Edgardo and I were a bit nervous since our material is fairly complex (we're teaching about neuroscience and artificial intelligence), the kids surprised us with how much they knew! I definitely didn't know what cells and neurons were when I was their age.
Immediately after their class, we had a group of high schoolers, so real quick we had to go from 0 to 100 in terms of explanations and class structure. As someone who's hoping to end up in education someday, it was really challenging and fun to figure out how to alter our class to cater to different ages.
After another full day of teaching, we packed up and headed to our host's house to unwind. Since I've been teaching for awhile, I think I've built up a pretty good teaching stamina. Unfortunately for everyone else, they're still working on it. So while a few people napped, the rest of us headed to a Starbucks to catch up on some work and some reading.
Many of us are avid readers (we brought a box of books with us to share over the summer!), so whenever we have the chance after a day of biking, we'll often find a comfy chair and read to relax. Here are some of the things we've been reading:
I've been reading Lifelong Kindergarten: Cultivating Creativity through Projects, Passion, Peers, and Play by Mitch Resnick. The book is about the creative thinking and how we can work to cultivate this kind of thinking in kids. One of the emphases of this book is the idea that we should allow kids to learn by guided exploration -- something that I really should incorporate into my workshop. I'm almost done, so next up on my list is Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig. I've heard lot's of great things about this book, so I can't wait to get started.
Leah (top left) has been reading Dune by Frank Herbert. She picked it up first in Matt's house in Carbondale, and we bought a copy after the Learning Festival in Farmington! I'm pretty excited to read it after she's done. Apparently a lot of us are sci-fi fans but many of us haven't read Dune.
Bill (bottom left) is reading All The Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr. This book has been on my reading list for awhile now, so I'm also excited to get chance to read this when Bill's done. Although the book is real thick, Bill's been reading at almost every chance we get. Today in Starbucks, he reached a critical part near the end and looked up from the book completely distraught (right before I took the picture of him smiling). Unfortunately for me, I think there's a long line of readers up next for this book.
Erin's (bottom right) been reading Endurance by Scott Kelly. It's about his year in space and from what I gathered when she was reading it allowed at the pool in Hazard, it talks a lot about astronauts and their lives.
This is nowhere near all the books we've been reading or hope to read, so I'll keep everyone updated as we move along through our book lists!