Exploration's Approach to Teaching

By Barb Trainor, Director of Curriculum and Instruction

An Exploration classroom is lively and active. Students are moving, designing projects, and challenging each other. Physics principles might be illustrated by riding large hovercrafts around a hockey rink, or firing five-foot - tall trebuchets on a playing field. Improvisational theater might be used to describe how white blood cells fight off a virus. Enticing aromas emanate from a kitchen where students are preparing food as part of a restaurant management course. At Exploration, we want our students to lose themselves in learning. We want them to look up at a clock and be surprised that a class could be over since it feels like it just started.

None of this happens by accident. At the Exploration Center in Norwood, Massachusetts, 25 people work full time on planning and developing Exploration’s summer programs. Joining them are more than 75 professional educators working part time on curriculum development and the mentoring and supervision of Exploration teachers. Our Curriculum Advisory Committee, made up of professors and other experts in their fields, helps generate new course ideas, shape current curriculum, and keep Exploration on the leading edge of the world of people and ideas. Studio space and a workshop at the Exploration Center mean that we can build prototypes of go-carts, boats, and 12-foot puppets. Having project space means we can test robots, experiment with ideas for art installations, and weld frames for large trikes we will use for student activities. At the Exploration Center you can see and feel curiosity in action.

All the senior members of Exploration’s administration have taught in schools and have enormous respect for those in the teaching profession. Most school teachers are under tremendous pressure to make sure their students perform well on tests and meet state standards. For many schools, strong test performance is the foremost indicator of success. The downside to focusing on test achievement is that teaching can become more focused on filling the student with knowledge than on student engagement, critical thinking, problem solving, or working in teams. When grades and testing are eliminated from the equation, teachers have the opportunity to change the way they approach what goes on in their classrooms.

Some experienced teachers are thrilled with the opportunities and challenges presented when grades and testing play no role, but sadly, some are not. Even teachers with many years of experience do not always know how to go about defining essential questions, developing activity-based exercises, teaching to multiple learning styles, fostering creative environments, and making sure that each and every student is actively engaged. And at Explo, we also want our classes to be fun –- not a standard goal of your typical class in school.

To make sure all of this happens, Exploration has set up perhaps the most comprehensive curriculum development and teacher development program of any summer program or summer school in the country. Each year, every Exploration teacher must engage in a process, whereby he or she works one-on-one with a professional educator prior to the start of the summer session. The purpose of this work is to ensure that Exploration courses are engaging, intellectually provocative, activity based, and student centered. And this is true whether the Explo teacher is a college student, a graduate student, or a professional classroom teacher. (This planning process and the work involved during the summer is rigorous. In fact, teachers and their advisors can earn undergraduate and graduate credit for their work.)

In addition to our one-on-one work prior to the start of the summer, we have a large Curriculum and Instruction Department at each of our Programs. For instance, at our Senior Program, we have 13 full-time professional educators who work as teaching advisors and mentors for us during the summer, focusing on the quality of teaching and the classroom experience. Each teacher’s class is visited at least once a week, and teacher and advisor have a weekly conference time set aside to review what went on in class and what can be improved. Many teachers have said that the feedback and support they received at Exploration was the most intensive, useful, and inspiring in their educational careers. This comparison includes their experiences in well-regarded graduate education programs, and as teachers, instructors, and professors at leading public and independent schools, colleges, and universities.

Others recognize Exploration’s expertise in the fields of curriculum design and teacher development. The Massachusetts Department of Education has approved Exploration as a provider of Professional Development Points for public school teachers. Exploration runs workshops for public and independent school teachers and educators at non-profit organizations. At a recent meeting Exploration had with administrators from a public school district west of Boston, a middle school principal said, “I want our students to be as engaged and as excited about their classes as what I’ve seen while visiting Explo. We’d like Explo to help us learn to teach differently.”

To learn more about Exploration’s curriculum and teacher development work, contact Barb Trainor, Exploration’s year-round Director of Curriculum and Instruction at: btrainor@explo.org