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2014 CTI Teachers As Scholars: The Nature of Energy

8.5_11natureenergyCTI Fellows Share New Curricula on Energy Science

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CTI will share bright new ideas for teaching and learning about energy in a special Teachers As Scholars event on Tuesday, Sept. 30, from 5:30 to 8 p.m. at the EnergyExplorium at McGuire Nuclear Station in Huntersville. The program features CTI Fellows who collaborated on the topic “The Nature of Energy: How We Use and Store It to Power Our Everyday Lives,” and highlights innovative curriculum they developed in their CTI seminar. Seminar Leader Susan Trammell, professor of physics and optical science at UNC Charlotte, will also share her energy expertise.

Sponsored by Piedmont Natural Gas and Duke Energy, the event is free and open to the public. It begins with a reception and viewing of the EnergyExplorium’s exhibits from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m., followed by presentations and a panel discussion with Trammell and CTI Fellows until 8 p.m.

Featured topics and teachers include:

  • The Nature of Energy: How to Use and Store It to Power our Everyday Lives – Trammell
  • Energy in Our World – Cindy Woolery, Science, Elizabeth Traditional Elementary School
  • Cruising Continents and an Awesome Asthenosphere: How Convection and Geothermal Energy Fuel Earth’s Ever Changing Surface! – Julie Ruziska Tiddy, Science, Carmel Middle School
  • Mama Did Not Take the Kodachrome Away But Charge-Coupled Devices Did – Deb Semmler, Physics, East Mecklenburg High School

Read the Press Release

View all 13 curriculum units developed by CTI Fellows in The Nature of Energy seminar.

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Events Other Special Events

Teachers as Scholars: African American Literature of the Civil Rights Movement – 2/7/13

CTI Fellows will share new curriculum they created about African American literature relating to civil rights, from 5:30 to 8 p.m., Thursday, Feb. 7, at the Gantt Center for African American Art + Culture in uptown Charlotte.

Sponsored by Charlotte Teachers Institute, the Gantt Center and PNC Bank, this “Teachers as Scholars” event will feature CMS teachers who collaborated in an intensive, semester-long CTI seminar, “African American Literature of the Civil Rights Movement.” Brenda Flanagan, the Edward Armfield Professor of English at Davidson College, led the seminar.

Dr. Flanagan’s seminar explored the Black Arts Movement and poetry and drama that reflected and paralleled the modern civil rights movement from 1955 to 2000. Each of the 13 CTI Fellows in the seminar produced an extensive, student-centered curriculum unit for their own classroom, and to be shared with for teachers everywhere. Three of these teachers, from elementary, middle and high school levels, will present their work during the Feb. 7 Teachers as Scholars program.

“One of CTI’s strategic goals is to provide opportunities to showcase CMS teachers’ innovative scholarship created in CTI seminars to a wider community audience,” said Scott Gartlan, CTI executive director. “This partnership with the Gantt Center will serve as an important step in fulfilling this goal.”

Free and open to the public, the event will begin with a reception and viewing of the Gantt exhibition “America I AM: The African American Imprint.” Presentations and a panel discussion with Dr. Flanagan and the three fellows will follow at 6:30 p.m. Featured topics and teachers will include:

  • African American Literature of the Civil Rights Movement – Brenda Flanagan, Davidson College.
  • Using Poetry to Teach Children about the Civil Rights Movement – Elouise Payton, kindergarten-third-grade teacher, Barringer Academic Center.
  • The Power Perspective: Reading the Literature of the Civil Rights Movement through a Socio-Historical Lens – Stefanie Carter-Dodson, eighth-grade language arts teacher, Martin Luther King, Jr. Middle School.
  • Art and Black Identity in the Civil Rights Movement – Larry Bosc, social studies teacher, East Mecklenburg High School.

Each of the 13 teachers in the seminar produced a unique set of lessons related to African American literature of the civil rights movement and designed specifically for their own students.
“We hope that these units inspire other teachers to share their creativity with colleagues in an effort to benefit more students in more classrooms across the district,” Gartlan said. Dr. Flanagan’s seminar was one of eight CTI conducted on a wide range of topics for a total of 94 CMS teachers from all grade levels and subject areas, led by Davidson College and UNC Charlotte faculty. The units developed in all eight seminars will be posted soon on the CTI and Yale National Initiative websites for use by teachers around the world. CTI recently announced a new set of eight seminars for CMS teachers to begin in April.

 

Other Special Events

Exploding Conceptions: Race – 04/12/11

Charlotte Teachers Institute (CTI) invited CMS teachers to Exploding Conceptions: Race – an opportunity to explore Discovery Place’s Race: Are We So Different? exhibit and to engage in Race Exchanges (please see details below) on Tuesday, April, 12, 2011, from 5:15 to 7:45 p.m.

This event was free and open only to CMS teachers. There is a set limit of 100 participants (pre-paid by CTI), so please be certain you can commit to being present before registering.

CTI wishes to thank the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation for its generous support of this CTI event at Discovery Place.

Are we all different? Or just variations of the same?

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Other Special Events

3 UpTown: Tchaikovsky Tchats – 03/15/12

Teachers and the public engaged with artistic leaders from three of Charlotte’s premier performing arts organizations at “3 UpTown: Tchaikovsky Tchats” on Thursday, March 15, 2012, at the Blumenthal Performing Arts Center, at a free event presented by Charlotte Teachers Institute.

The evening began with a reception at 5:15 p.m., followed by an informal panel discussion at 6 p.m., and culminated with Opera Carolina’s “Student Night at the Opera” performance of Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin at 7 p.m.

The “3 UpTown: Tchaikovsky Tchats” panelists were James Meena, general director and principal conductor of Opera Carolina; Jacomo Bairos, associate conductor of the Charlotte Symphony Orchestra; and Jean-Pierre Bonnefoux, president and artistic director of the North Carolina Dance Theatre. The three organizations are collaborating to produce Charlotte’s Ulysses Spring Arts Festival, with this year’s focus on the Russian composer Peter Illych Tchaikovsky. Each presented a variety of performances related to the iconic composer who worked in musical forms from symphony to opera to ballet. The panelists reflected on their own relationships with Tchaikovsky’s work and provided a behind the scenes look at Opera Carolina’s performance of Eugene Onegin.

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