On the first day of class we brainstormed a list of sources of knowledge about adolescents and adolescence.  Among those things on the list was “veteran colleagues.”  Students reasoned---and rightly so---that their veteran colleagues might be a good source of knowledge about adolescent learners. With this as a starting place I introduced the Carnegie Websites as one of the three “texts” we would be studying during the semester to learn about adolescent learners.  We started by looking together at the web page of Claire Bove, a middle school science teacher who was not only a Carnegie Scholar, but a cooperating teacher for the Mills Teacher Credentialing Program. This initial fore onto Claire’s site gave me an opportunity to demonstrate how to access the Carnegie web pages, and what the format might be for studying them (link to class plan).

Before the next class, which was week later, the students studied Claire’s site focusing on the various strategies Claire uses to get to know her learners (link the study guide).  The subsequent class began with an interactive notebook prompt (link to prompt page) that asked students to connect their reading for the week with what they observed of Claire’s teaching (link to syllabus). Our goal was to learn from what we could observe of Claire’s practice about how she came to know her learners, what she learn from these strategies, and how she used that knowledge in her teaching.