That was the response to one of my entrance cards my first week in Uzbekistan - that I gave to the 30 Uzbek teachers I'd been asked to work with all last week - and yes that expletive was a term I clearly understood. The basic message to kick off the week was a teacher letting me know they weren't even clear about what they were supposed to spend a 30 hour week with me learning about. At least that made the initial target pretty easy - get right to answering the question and sharing some of the why! So where did we end up - take a look. These are the seven group's models to answer the question - what is STEM? The sticky notes are from our gallery walk - answering the question "what idea here is most interesting to you?"
I really think they grasped the basic idea that it's just great proficiency based pedagogy - focusing instruction around fundamental skills, using formative assessment to check in regularly for understanding, and working hard on relationships and classroom atmosphere to assure that your classroom is a place students want to be. This week it's going to be time to practice - design some actual lessons built from the Uzbekistan National Curriculum and actually try them out in a local school. Going to be a great week!