Sharks, Sculpture and DNA Sequencing—the Suprising Summer Activities of WHREA Teachers

As noted in a previous blog, lots of teachers spend their summer months developing and advancing their knowledge, teaching skills and professional profile. To give people some idea of the various activities that WHRHS teachers get up to during the summer, we will be providing periodical news and updates throughout the summer.

If the parents of any WHRHS students would like to pass on information about their child’s activities during the summer, academic or otherwise, we would be more than happy to publish this information on our WHREA blog. It helps us all forge stronger ties to our school community when we share with each other what various members of the community are doing, so please send any news items and/or pictures to pgrunther@whrhs.org to get student news published in the Warren Patch. Thanks!

• Working towards his PhD at Lehigh University, physics teacher Michael Kutch plans to take a course entitled, “Technology Tools and their Implementation in the Classroom” this summer. However, Mike is not only working on the theoretical side of things since he is also going to be updating his pilot’s license with a glider rater during the summer. Mike will have to pass a “checkride” which involves applying physics rather than studying the subject: indeed once Mike’s glider is towed aloft by another airplane he as pilot will have to search out pockets of rising air to gain back lost altitude, playing an energy conservation game that depends on physics…sounds exhilarating!
• Michelle Madigan, chemistry teacher at WHRHS, will be teaching chemistry to gifted young students this summer at the Johns Hopkins University Center for Talented Youth.
• English teacher Jana Battiloro will be studying at the Advanced Placement Summer Institute to prepare for teaching an 11^th grade AP Language and Composition class next year. Fellow colleague Mike Porter will also be attending AP training at Rutgers University.
• Arts teacher Kate Griffin is off to an exciting honeymoon in Australia! While there she will be getting her scuba certification, diving with white sharks (which is scarier, that or getting married?). She will be using advanced underwater photographic equipment to document her experiences and plans on passing on her new expertise to her photography students at Watchung Hills in the future – congratulations Kate!
• History teacher Scott Phillips will be working for the month of July on the campus of Drew University where he will be teaching English to international students in a program called Study Tours sponsored by Rider University. Scott’s students get 3 hours of classroom instruction in the mornings and then in the afternoon they’re off on bus tours to key American tourist attractions.
• Steven Speeney who teaches computerized graphic design at WHRHS has a whole other identity outside school as a budding sculptor. Steve works in wood, ceramic and clay and this summer he will be preparing pieces for his first solo show which will be held in October at the Nancy Dryfoos Gallery at Kean University. Stay tuned for a full blog on Steve and his sculpture in September, but in the meantime for more information on his upcoming show see the following link. http://www.kean.edu/~gallery/Upcoming.html
• Biology teacher Anne Marie Johnson has an incredibly interesting and educational summer activity planned: together with two of her junior students she will be attending a 3-week program at Rutgers where they will be collaborating on a DNA sequencing project. They will attend lectures by University science professors and receive mentoring on how to continue their project throughout the 2012-13 school year at WHRHS. The students will present their data at the end of the program and they will also be the leaders of a WHRHS club which will continue working on analyzing DNA sequences next year. Any novel sequences they find will be published on an international database for scientists. No wonder these students are motivated to continue academic work in the summer!
• Online learning and professional development is a rapidly growing area and WHREA World Cultures teacher Nancy Koppel plans to take advantage of one of these opportunities this summer. She will be following a course in East Asian History offered by the National Consortium for Teaching Asia.
• Our culinary arts specialist Susan Jaslove is studying at Seton Hall for her Masters in Instructional Design and this summer she is signed up for two graduate courses, “Digital Research and Information Literacy” and  “Advanced Psychology of Learning”.