Jigsaw-MSConf

STEM department vs discipline-specific departments

unsettling, large department

like the idea of having a STEM department b/c sometimes the more innovative teachers in a department are NOT the department chair, so there would be protected time for teachers interested in STEM to collaborate and share ideas.

would rather see some "STEM" department meetings for departments to have time for collaboration, but keep discipline specific departments. These meetings would need to be during protected time, not on top of everything else.

also - invite other departments to attend STEM meeting (such as reading or literature) to participate as would be helpful.

combining/obliterating discipline-specific departments would be a nightmare; too large of a group

St Agnes - pulled in all MS math and science teachers a year ago to have a STEM meeting, but have not had one this year.

After first STEM THink Tank, science and math departments met to discuss common language; meeting did not go so well. The entire departments attended; perhaps have that type of meeting be voluntary or meet by same level courses.

It would be interesting to have someone be in charge of making sure these conversations take place between/among departments and to ensure there was follow through on actions and ideas. The meetings would be focused endeavors to tackle STEM topics, not materials lists, or department-specific minutae.

Perfect scenario: Perhaps a handful of faculty from STEM departments would step up and take lead or facilitator role in organizing STEM department meetings so that this is not just another department chair responsibility or dept chair cramming something down their throat.

Feel that if I take this idea back to my school, there would be a lot of resistance - more meetings, more work possibly.

HH Math / Science - 8th grade project Reney and Becky were paid this summer to come in and chart out their curricula and figure out how to rearrange subject matter so that students did not struggle over difficult concepts at the same time in both classes AND looked for places that math could cover concepts needed in science beforehand. They are continuing to look for more areas where they can help/supplement each other in this manner.

US is so difficult in terms of collaboration because for a given science class, such as chemistry, students may be in 4 or 5 different levels of math classes.

Very hard to get overlap between US classes.

We need to find some ways to think outside the box - is there a way to use these individualized learning methods that were presented this morning?

Holton-Arms teachers were paid this summer to develop collaborative projects - lots of success.

Do Humanities feel left out? STEM is a label for collaboration and it should be happening everywhere, not just STEM.

Perhaps STEM department meetings could be "virtual" meetings.