How does CA inspire pedagogical innovation year after year? By empowering our incredible faculty to think outside the box with professional development opportunities that translate their interests into incredible learning opportunities for our students—in the classroom and beyond.
Don't take our word for it. Just check out what they came up with in a single summer.
While we typically think of teachers as being off during the summer, each year, several Cary Academy faculty choose to devote at least part of their well-deserved summer vacation time to professional growth activities.
Cary Academy offers two major grant programs to support the professional development of our faculty during the summer months: the Friday Fellowship and the Innovative Curriculum Grant.
The Friday Fellowship program was created in 2002 in honor of Mr. William C. Friday, President Emeritus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a founding member of the Cary Academy Board of Directors. The Innovative Curriculum Grant was launched in 2017 to support projects that advance CA’s strategic goals.
So, what exactly did our tireless teachers work on this summer through these grant programs?
Rachel Bringewatt and Andrew Chiaraviglio, Middle School science teachers, received a collaborative grant to develop an 8th-grade capstone environmental stewardship project that allows students to engage in current environmental issues through real-world avenues used by scientists.
Taylor Crompton and Meredith Stewart, Middle School social studies teachers, received a collaborative grant to re-imagine 8th-grade United States history curriculum, including a new Civil War unit focused on engaging students in designing a memorial exhibit for the NC History Center on the Civil War, Emancipation, and Reconstruction in Fayetteville. Taylor and Meredith plan to take students to the museum site in Fayetteville, as well as to another existing museum in the area, where they can interact with the museum designers and curators, as well as patrons. Students will have the opportunity to view and engage with the ways in which the ideas of memory and power are presented across culture, and will be challenged to approach the memorializing process with the principles of accessibility, cultural relevancy, and trauma sensitivity at the forefront of their designs.
Abby Seeskin, Upper School English teacher, and Maggie Grant, Service Learning Director, received a collaborative grant to develop a new English elective in LGBTQIA+ literature with a strong service-learning component to enhances students’ understandings of relevancy and advocacy. Throughout the semester, Abby and Maggie will work together to bring in different organizations working in areas such as HIV/AIDS advocacy or homelessness, so that students can hear firsthand from community members doing this work. In the final unit of the course, students would partner with Rainbow Collective for Change, a Durham-based nonprofit, to develop reading resources for LGBTQIA+ youth/teens who are not able to access queer literature in their schools readily.
Jeong Sihm, Upper School math teacher, received a grant to develop a new advanced math course—Advanced Topics in Data Science Using Linear Algebra—that challenges the traditional calculus-dominated narrative of math education and spotlights the indispensable contributions of linear algebra to data science and beyond. The aim is for students to come away from the course understanding not only the foundational principles of linear algebra, but also how to apply those principles effectively using Python programming—a skill highly valued in the data science field.
German Urioste, Upper School English teacher, received funding to research and develop a new English elective on urban fiction exploring what contemporary literature has to say about urban experiences and how they are impacted by the forces of race, class, and gender. In the course, students will dive deeply into the fictional depiction of two dynamic and radically different urban settings: Harlem as depicted in Coleson Whitehead’s Harlem Shuffle and an unnamed town on the border of Mexico and the United States in Yuri Herrera’s Signs Preceding the End of the World. The examination of the two primary settings will be complemented by consideration of other relevant works of music, short stories, film, poetry, and non-fiction related to civil-rights era Harlem and the contemporary border crisis.
Rachel Wildhaber, Experiential Entrepreneurship Teacher, and Palmer Seeley, Entrepreneurship Director, received a grant to expand the lab-based entrepreneurship program in The Hub to include new courses on small-business operations, team leadership, product development, marketing, and management. All the courses will involve hands-on engagement in Hub operations, as well as opportunities for meaningful interaction with community partners.
Erick Crepsac, Middle School math Teacher, participated for a second time in the Teachers Across Borders Program in Southern Africa (TAB-SA). Erick was part of a team of American math and science teachers who conducted workshops with South African colleagues from rural schools, sharing methodology, techniques, and pedagogy in STEM content areas.
Tamara Friend, Middle School science teacher and Charlotte Kelly, Upper School science teacher, participated in a National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Workshop on the Legacy of Early African Americans & the Gullah-Geechee People. The six-day workshop explored the history and cultural legacy of the Gullah-Geechee people of the Lowcountry of Georgia, descendants of enslaved people from the West Coast of Africa.
Alicia Morris, Middle School social studies teacher, participated in the four-dayAmplifying Native Voices in North Carolina History Summer Teacher Institute at the Museum of the Southeast American Indian, which offered NC teachers the opportunity to engage with Indigenous educators and researchers and acquire the tools needed to incorporate Indigenous voices, traditional knowledge, and Lumbee culture/history into their classrooms.