Features

Kentucky students who go to a foreign country are sometimes faced with a significant problem – they can’t ask for food. More specifically, they can’t order the food they want, according to Jacque Van Houten, world language and international education consultant for the Kentucky Department of Education.

Students go to school to learn, make friends and gain invaluable experiences to take with them beyond the walls of a school building.

Students in schools across Kentucky are using buttons to learn about sorting, color, shapes and classification, all while drawing inferences about the objects’ owner. Teachers are using original source documents to produce informed citizens, voters and leaders. All are happening because of archaeology, a word not even found in the Program of Studies, according to A. Gwynn Henderson, archaeologist and education coordinator with the Kentucky Archaeological Survey (KAS), jointly administered by the Kentucky Heritage Council and the University of Kentucky Department of Anthropology.

Last year, 47 students at Muhlenberg County High School used hands-on activities to study diabetes to learn about homeostasis and metabolism, and they investigated sickle-cell disease while learning about genetics and DNA.

Some teachers come to network. Some want to know about testing changes. Others pick up new strategies for classroom learning, while others want a challenge for themselves. But the common bond they all share is they want to be better Advanced Placement (AP) teachers.

Fuqua, a family consumer science teacher at Bryan Station High School (Fayette County), started a school garden at her school last year. She incorporates the garden with core content to make her students more aware of what the physical world offers them on a daily basis. “A garden is a place to do something yourself that has visible results,” Fuqua said. ”This builds pride and a connection with nature and the world around us that I feel is incredibly important to a person’s life. I believe that people need a break from the technologies around them a few moments out of each day to stop and smell the tomatoes.”

By Tamara Buchanan Caldwell County Elementary School tamara.buchanan@caldwell.kyschools.us As a physical education (PE) teacher who uses dance instruction in my classes at Caldwell County Elementary School, Terrie White’s The Elements of Dance is a book other PE...

Many teachers across Kentucky are walking into classrooms as professional teachers for the first time this month. Danny Pagan, who teaches students with special needs at Dry Ridge Elementary School (Grant County), wants them to know that no two days are ever the same. “For me, every new day is like a canvas,” said the former graphic designer now in his fifth year teaching. “I will most definitely bring my paint brush and all my colors, yet the picture I paint may be different than the one I planned.”

It started out as an idea to introduce students to critical thinking beyond what traditional textbooks and lessons offer. Now it’s a part of who they are.

In what has become a familiar scene, Benny Lile was greeted with numerous well wishes from his Facebook friends on his birthday in January. But for Lile, director of Instruction and Technology for the Barren County school district, a message from a former student who works in Centre College’s IT department stood out.