Encouraging article in the NY Times yesterday: "A Teacher on the Front Line as Faith and Science Clash." Yes, there are ways to avoid drawing lines in the sand, to work productively across (even because of) divides.

"I don't expect you to 'believe' the scientific explanation of evolution ... I do expect you to understand it" ... David Campbell, high school teacher, Florida.

" ... there's a difference beween thinking something is interesting and believing it" ... Doug Dougherty, student in Campbell's course.

The Brain and Behavior Institute actually helped me to put myself in the position of my students and experience how it feels to be a student in a classroom with the Inquiry mode of learning. Most of the learning experiences we had were done through questioning and one form of hands-on activity or the other. On several occasions when the topic for the week or even the day was being introduced using the lecture mode, I feel very impatient waiting for the time we are going to be doing related activities on the subject. This is the situation with our students. They can’t wait to do something hands-on (Kinesthetic learners) or watch a video/teacher demonstration (visual learners) in order to enhance their learning.

There is a new teaching tool that uses "the most current understanding of how the children learn" to provide instruction as to how to best improve the learning of every child on an individual basis. That's the claim. Here's the link to a much fuller explanation of how this works. It takes a lot of work/child to set up the initial assessment, but then has a number of teachers who are singing its praises.

Oh, and it's $15/child/year.

http://www.eschoolnews.com/news/top-news/?i=54932;_hbguid=aad77d55-6dcc-47bc-bf7a-d623374632ad

If it works, I'd say that it is very much worth it. However, I can't see a high school teacher using this for all the students.