TRRE Summer Institute 2019

TRRE Cohort 3 with Emilie Coppinger,
and UNH Cooperative Extension Advisors Karen Deighan and Chris Whiting

Cohort 3 celebrated the completion of the  UNH TRRE Summer Institute with  a culminating project presented to their community-based partners. This summer the Seminar and Practicum in Teaching was co-taught for the first time. According to Tom Schram, Director of Pedagogy and Clinical Experience, the co-teaching experience with Lakes Region Faculty in Residence, Bryan Mascio, benefited the residents as each faculty brings complementary strengths and a shared philosophy about teacher development to the program. Bryan Mascio also taught Human Development and Learning/Educational Psychology and Socio-Cultural Perspectives on Teaching and Learning, which residents were also required to take this summer. This cross integration of summer courses allowed for a re-design of the community-based internship and the culminating summer project.

Cross-curricular integration was not limited to summer courses. Tom Higginbotham, TRRE Director of Science, joined class for a lesson and activity on Design Thinking. Residents then used their new knowledge of Design Thinking, along with knowledge of Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Model, the children at their community-based internship, the broader community, and an understanding of complex systems, to present and propose the creation or modification of some aspect of their community-based organization partner program. Using the steps of Design Thinking, residents created a plan for how his/her Community Based Organization (CBO) could extend what they provide to the community. The project allowed residents to demonstrate and apply their learning from the Summer Institute.

Cohort 3 resident Lauren Conner’s community-based internship was at the Prescott Farm Environmental Education Center in Laconia. Her community design project proposed building new relationships between the community and teachers through shared experience and challenges. The core idea of ‘unifying in front of kids with kids’ is to have a day where parents and teachers can both be active participants in activities and challenges provided by Prescott Farm. Camp counselors would facilitate group activities and within those activities the child, the teacher and parent would have a chance to be a “leader”.

Having Teachers, Parents, and children be active participants together enables a unique opportunity. It allows parents and teachers to step outside their comfort zones, let their guards down, and take a break from conventional roles. Seeing each other take on different roles and power positions outside of the school environment may help break down some of the barriers preventing solidarity between the community and school. Since community and school derive much of the story in the cause and effect relationship between learning and children, establishing cohesion between the two promotes the growth of learners.

Lauren at Prescott Farm

It’s no secret that children want to feel heard and have their emotions and opinions validated. Giving kids the opportunity to be the ones in charge can build leadership and can be a powerful way to reflect on how they might see things and again work to unify a better relationship all around. - Lauren

Eliza Braunstein, Cohort 3, shared the following about her experience connected to her summer community-based internship at Tin Mountain Conservation Center in Albany, NH.

During the initial summer of TRRE coursework, my classmates and I learned about the importance of valuing indigenous knowledge when teaching in rural communities. Value is often disproportionately placed on urban knowledge, which places country kids at a disadvantage from the start and which creates a discord between their home life and the institutional concept of success. We also learned that children learn and develop as they gain new perspectives. And yet, students who are geographically isolated may have limited access to experiencing new cultures and places. ​

When an eight-year-old at Tin Mountain’s Pictures & Poems summer camp painted mountain not as the sharp, gray and white peaks of the Rockies, as seen in textbooks, but as varying shades of blue, layered upon one another as wavy lines – a mountain view as she knew it – I realized that what Tin Mountain already offers the community are opportunities for children and adults to explore and establish a fundamental connection with the local environment, which builds into passion for the environment and a willingness to protect it. ​

Yet, it is difficult for locals to truly cherish the beauty and nature-based opportunities that surround them when they know no comparison. Therefore, I proposed that Tin Mountain could not only continue to foster that connection between children and the nature that surrounds them, but that we, as educators, also need to help children explore other living environments before they can truly understand and value where they live. This sense of belonging is important to the promotion of the concept that success (i.e., life, liberty, and happiness) can be found at home in rural communities.​

Eliza at Tin Mountain summer camp (center back row)

As I would be working in a public school classroom for the second stage of the TRRE program, I focused my initiative on engaging those students and determined my ultimate goal to be “to form a partnership between Tin Mountain Conservation Center and the Conway Elementary kindergarten by designing a space, system, product, or service to incorporate TMCC’s environmental science or natural history expertise into the classroom and thus provide children with an opportunity to forge a connection with our local environment and to learn what it is that makes our environment unique and something to be cherished.”​

My lesson parts has five components to fulfill my goal. First, the students will explore nature by walking through fields, meandering along the river, trekking through the woods, and gazing up at the mountains with Tin Mountain staff. They will then create art to depict something they saw or experienced in nature. Next, within the classroom, students will explore an unfamiliar place through photographs, stories, conversations, and videos, and create more art to depict something new that they discovered or observed. Lastly, we will have show and tell to compare and contrast their two pieces of art and the different environments. My lesson plan uses the Universal Design for Learning framework and the Neo-Piagetian ideas we studied during our coursework this summer; knowledge of these theories and practice in implementing research-based techniques will help me to improve my pedagogical skills as I continue teaching and will allow me to create a more welcoming, open, supportive classroom environment as I continue my teaching career.​ - Eliza

Clearly, TRRE residents have begun their discovery of the connection between schools and communities. The  Summer Institute culminating assignment is one example of explicit instruction in teaching theory applied in practice.  In learning to leverage new concepts in teaching practice and community assets, the Summer Institute was successful in preparing residents for the start of their school year with their teaching mentors.