SYEFEST Handbook Chapters

The below list provides you a complete list of the SYEFEST handbooks chapters. Click on each link to read the chapters. be sure not to miss the appendices and resources for each chapter. You can always come back here with the drop down nav bar, or by clicking on the text link at the bottom of each page. Happy reading!

• Chapter 1. Model professional practice as leaders
  You can provide your teachers with an extraordinarily rich model for professional practice simply by the way you and your co-leader act during the SYE Institute. This starts with the way you teach them as adult learners, but goes on to include the way you comport yourself outside, your enthusiasm for inquiry and learning, your caring for the environment, your scientific rigour and your commitment to excellence. You are asking teachers to do a lot ... show them how!
  
  
• Chapter 2. Get ready to form an SYE Institute Under Construction
  Get yourself and your teachers ready. Learn what you need to prepare to start your institute. Forma a strategy, get the background and plan, plan, plan!
  
  
• Chapter 3. Build teachers’ competence with inquiry.
  Teachers need to experience inquiry learning on real schoolyards for themselves. In this way, they discover key elements of the inquiry process while learning ecology and getting comfortable being outside. These experiences and discoveries provide the foundation for application in their teaching.
  
  
• Chapter 4. Teach ecology and local natural history Under Construction
  We need to identify important ecology concepts that are suited to inquiry-based exploration in the schoolyard. These become the focus for our teaching, emphasizing and modeling our commitment to depth over breadth. The ecology concepts should spring from the "new ecology" as articulated by leaders in the field. Teachers will be more comfortable teaching ecology on the schoolyard as they get to know some of the prominent and most interesting organisms and environments there. Teachers and their students can ask and answer a broader range of questions as they gain knowledge about local natural history.
  
  
• Chapter 5. Stimulate reflection on learning and teaching Under Construction
  By reflecting on their own experiences as inquiry learners and on the ways their learning was facilitated by the workshop leaders, and by exploring the practical challenges of implementing inquiry teaching, teachers may consider their own teaching practices and beliefs in a new light. Through discussion, reflection, practice and feedback, teachers form a view of themselves as facilitators of inquiry, and are encouraged and guided in key steps along the way by the supportive group of peers and leaders.
  
  
• Chapter 6. Have teachers make instruction plans Under Construction
  Teachers need and appreciate having time during a workshop to develop concrete instructional plans to use with their students in the coming year. The plans provide structure and motivation to their effort to put what they've learned into a useful framework. These plans also provide useful information for the leaders about what teachers took from their experience.
  
  
• Chapter 7. Provide useful resources Under Construction
  Teachers benefit tremendously from having access to quality materials to support their teaching. It is key to help them find, get familiar with, and incorporate published curricula, science resources, children's literature and field study supplies into their instructional plans.
  
  
• Chapter 8. Sustain teachers’ innovations Under Construction
  Teacher growth takes place over time, with the support and encouragement of peers, teachers and role models. The more you can work with teachers during the school year and, preferably, for several years, the deeper and more long-lasting will be the changes in their practice.
  
  
• Chapter 9. Put it all together to form a cohesive SYE Institute Under Construction
  Weaving the strands of a Schoolyard Ecology Institute is an artful balancing act, especially since each strand shifts with the participants and their interests and needs. You will need to make some hard choices, to stay flexible, and to stick to your most important ideas in the face of many competing notions.