Volunteers are essential to the missions of many informal education organizations. But unlike relatively-unskilled volunteer positions – think repairing trails or passing out food at a soup kitchen – the volunteer educator has one of the most demanding job descriptions there is: teaching. Training volunteers to be...
Several of my guests – Kady Yeomans, Claire Dobie, and many more to come – talk about the value of teaching extra cubiculum – outside the classroom, immersed in the nature about which we are teaching. Most naturalists I’ve ever met or worked with simply accept that it just works… that it’s unquestionable that getting...
On this week’s podcast, Claire Dobie and I talk about one of the first things outdoor educators learn to say: “I don’t know.” As a teacher, saying “I don’t know” positions us with our students as fellow-seekers of knowledge. One of the cardinal sins of teaching is to become the “sage on a stage,” the person with all...
On the podcast this week, music teacher Jim Cornfoot talked about connection – how, as a piano teacher, he spends part of every lesson establishing a personal rapport. And not just with new students, either – he continues to connect, at every meeting, even after knowing a student for years. What’s that about? Teachers...
How do you talk with your learners? Such a basic question – and yet as an informal educator I was never trained in it. Unfortunately, that means I started out my teaching career reproducing what I had experienced myself: lecture-style tours with a few minutes for questions at the end. But there is another way:...
In our conversation this week, Eileen Garcia-Sanchez told me about how they embrace the philosophy of risky play at the San Antonio Zoo preschool. She describes an old storm-beaten tree trunk on their campus, and what she does when a child gets to the top and wants to be lifted down: I’m not going to walk up to the...
Fox tracks and coyote tracks are really hard to tell apart – especially in the snow! For our Fun Fact in this week’s podcast, naturalist Claire Dobie described how she helps kids determine the difference. Want to find out yourself? Well, I won’t leak the secret here, but ur-ine luck! Make a pee-line – I mean, a...
On this week’s podcast, aquarist Jim DePompei describes a dance-like call and response technique they call the do-it-do-it at Cabrillo Marine Aquarium. Language educators have hit upon a similar strategy they call total physical response, but it needn’t be limited to the language classroom – I have used it teaching...
In our first podcast, educator Kady Yeomans described her work leading groups of kids on the floor of a large science museum. And the main sense I got from Kady was that she is always thinking about her audience – there are facts to deliver, sure, but there’s no lecture. Here’s how she put it, speaking from her...