| The Starks Center is a columned structure on the campus of Midway University in Kentucky. It is built on the footprint of the original Starks Hall, built 100 years ago. I found the light switches in the classroom we would be using for a historian lecture and professional development for teachers in mid-January. Soon others arrived to fill the room - teachers who would be the audience, as well as workers from the Wilderness Project, and a couple of other representatives for the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History (GLI). Each of these from GLI was a National History Teacher of the Year from past years. | |
| | Tim Bailey, director of curriculum development for GLI, introduced our session. Dr. John Fea, our scholar, was unable to make it in person due to a cancelled flight. He was forced to connect to us virtually. The other master teacher and I weren't up until after lunch, so we were also in charge of receiving and displaying the catered breakfast and lunch both provided by Panera. In between, we sat in on Fea's sessions. Later, I was up. My group of K-8 teachers climbed a floor up for my presentations. I was privileged to train these teachers in strategies with which they were largely unfamiliar. I felt like I was pretty effective as we talked about things like shared reading, prosody, academic rigor, text-based questioning, and more. |
