Tuesday, August 18, 2009

Would I recommend the RET program?

The RET program at Northeastern University is challenging, enriching, and helps to motivate the teacher. I would highly recommend this program to anyone who wants to work during their summer off.

The previous school year was an exhausting one for me. I taught science full-time, coached three after school sports, taught yoga, tutored, and endured ACL surgery. In the Spring, I applied to RET as a returning member. I knew what the program had in store for me and was very excited to participate. The RET program requires a lot from the participant, but the participant is adequately compensated. I regret that I could have given even more to the RET program this summer, if I hadn't had the stressful year I had previously.

That being said, I will take away a lot from this summer's experience. I will make the research I conducted and the lesson I created as part of RET, the center of my teaching this year in my biology classroom. I am excited to teach the students techniques that they have never been exposed to. I look forward to pushing my students to inquire and solve problems on their own.

Participate in RET at Northeastern if you are willing to push yourself and desire to experience the best professional development available to science and math teachers.

1 comment:

Paul Chanley said...

RET-2009: Final Posting.
Fellow colleagues: RET is fabulous and I highly recommend the program. The experience was enlightening and I consider it one of the best professional development opportunities that I have participated in. The people I met are great. And while it is a six week commitment for the summer, I felt it was well worth it. The program allowed me to explore areas I would not have typically been able to get involved in. For example, while working on the boat project at BU, I engaged in the full cycle of the engineering design process. Normally, you focus on only one or two areas of the design process during a professional development experience. In the case at BU, we went from determining the essential question to developing a preliminary design, prototyping, and then working toward the final design and redesign. That is a big accomplishment in a six week time span. Check out the Massachusetts’s Curriculum Frameworks Engineering & Technology “Engineering Design Process.” We experienced the whole process.

Paul