Watershed is rooted in the belief that students learn and grow best from educators who are expert learners and trusted mentors. We describe this in our “Educators as Mentors and Learners” Design Principle and Andrew Chernow, longtime math educator, puts it into action on a daily basis.
Andrew states, “Throughout my entire teaching career, I’ve sought opportunities to develop and grow my craft as a way to remain personally and professionally engaged, to model continual learning and growth for my students, and, of course, to better serve students’ exploration of the world through a mathematical lens.”
Recently, this took the form of achieving National Geographic Educator Certification. “This opportunity came at a perfect time for me and my Watershed students,” says Andrew. “The program’s philosophy aligns with Watershed’s Portrait of a Graduate character traits and skills development, and fits with the math department’s continued integration of the Work that Matters design principle into our curriculum. My capstone project for the program was a lesson plan designed and executed with the idea of using photos as data instead of just numbers. Students were able to see how others lived, then correlated those photos with numerical data such as GDP. This provided a visual understanding of the difference between economic classes.”
Andrew’s National Geographic Educator Certification cohort included 200 teachers from around the world. They worked in themed mentor groups of approximately 30 people. With access to a vast array of National Geographic data resources, they created lesson plans and workshoped them together. Following implementation of their lesson plans in their classrooms, participants shared their results and again offered and received feedback within their mentor group. “I was virtually the only math teacher in the entire cohort,” remarked Andrew, “but I joined a science mentor group and their feedback helped me strengthen my integration of data science into the math curriculum- a goal we have moving forward in the math department at Watershed. It was also great, especially during a pandemic, to have a way to collaborate meaningfully with teachers from around the world.”
Andrew was also happy with the student outcomes related to his capstone project. He found that students went beyond just applying numbers to a culture or an economic class. Once students saw photos of how families around the world lived, they tried to put meaning to what they discovered.
One student remarked, “This project allowed me to better understand how globalization plays a role in wealth. For example, some countries don’t have resources to trade and they can’t do as well as other countries with more resources.”
What’s next for Andrew? He plans to continue his relationship with the National Geographic Institute, using the resources available to him to facilitate more global connections and data science applications for his math students. “And,” says Andrew, “I think I’ll remain connected with the colleagues I met through the experience. Who knows what exciting professional development opportunities will be next for me!”
View a video presentation of Andrew’s capstone project here.
