Nurturing Curiosity

 On our website homepage, you will find a photo of Judith Finkelstein, the first Director of the Iowa Regents' Center for Early Developmental Education standing in the doorway of our Integrative Classroom Studio. The purpose of this classroom is defined by the phrase - This is where educators discover how to be the learner they want their students to be. This starts by engaging in metacognition as they work with materials in various experiences, thinking about what stimulates their own curiosity and how they might nurture their students' curiosity about what is in the world and how it works with similar materials and experiences. The Covid 19 crisis is making this difficult and we are thinking outside the box to continue to support preservice and inservice early childhood educators.

I am teaching a section of UNI's course, Teaching Elementary School Science. With the help of Iowa State Extension, we are engaging UNI preservice teachers in a full immersion experience of documenting the life cycle of the Monarch Butterfly. In the photo, you see a newly hatched caterpillar being teased into small agar plates supplied by Iowa State Extension. Each student will care for a caterpillar in their own living space, documenting its changes daily in their science journal. A caterpillar and materials are delivered to the doors of students in quarantine, enabling them to continue to participate in the experience and stay connected with their classmates in discussions on inquiry learning over Zoom. Even during a pandemic, they discover how to be the learner they want their students to be.