DISCOVERY PROJECTS

Teachers in My Community Unit

by Sarah Pulaski, Twinfield Union School

An Interview with Sarah l My Unit Outline & Plan l Student Work Samples l View Project Photos

Student Interviews—Audio Clips l Student Created Slide Show

Sarah's Post-Institute Reflection
I had a wonderful time at the Discovering Community Institute last summer. I left with a feeling of having been opened up in my perspective. I felt freer with my approach to curriculum design and empowered to try to incorporate technologies that would have intimidated me prior to the course. A broader and more organic definition of what community is was one of the most important things I left the course with. [An Interview with Sarah on her work with students]

My unit and approach to community curriculum is an effort to embrace and celebrate our evolving community.

New Tools and Methods
The range of presentations at the course was very valuable to me. It helped me gain understanding about some of the purposes for doing ethnography. It was also great to see so many different ways of doing it. Putting some of those art forms and methods into practice helped me to overcome any doubts I had about implementing them. My exposure to all of these presentations expanded my “tool kit” with curriculum design and has helped keep my teaching experience fresh. These are new methods that I am using and will continue to. My class binder is getting pretty battered!

A Better Understanding of Community
My idea about the definition of Community was somewhat fixed prior to the course. I had thought about community more in the context of local history. After the course I regarded community in a completely different way. The historical component was still present, but I saw community more as an evolving organism. I also recognized the equal value of all members and aspects of a community including recent immigrants, children, animals, and the landscape. I realized that I had set up a hierarchy in my mind about who had value in a community. I used to think that people who’s family had lived in a particular community for more generations were more valued or established community members. I am ashamed to admit that there are people within my community that I didn’t fully recognize as community members because I wasn’t aware of their ties or connections to the larger/historical town community.

My unit and approach to community curriculum is an effort to embrace and celebrate our evolving community. I also want students to view their community in the context of the past, present, and future. I want them to see themselves as valued and contributing community members. I love that this can be done through art. I am attempting to have my students discover community as I have done this past summer. We are having a pretty good time so far.

An Interview with Sarah l My Unit Outline & Plan l Student Work Samples l View Project Photos

Student Interviews—Audio Clips l Go to Student Created Slide Show