St. Regis teacher to put new method to work

ST. REGIS – A teacher in St. Regis is bringing home his own education received this summer on the opposite side of the country in hopes that his new knowledge will enhance the educational experience for his students in St. Regis.

Agri-science teacher Brandon Braaten said his time spent at the DuPont National Agri-Science Teacher Ambassador Academy in Chesterton, MD. was educational.

Braaten was one of only 50 teachers across the country to be chosen to attend the academy. He said the purpose of the academy was to teach teachers how to better execute lessons in a specific doctrine.

“The academy is based on inquiry-based learning,” Braaten said. “It was 55 hours of training and about three and a half days of inquiry-based instruction where we go through various types of lessons and learn how to apply them to all facets of agriculture education. It makes science seem less overwhelming to students.”

Braaten said, as a student again, one of the most important lessons he took home from the experience was the importance of challenging his students. He said when students take ownership of their education, the lessons they learn are more prone to stick in their minds.

“Often when kids are asked at the end of day, ‘what did you learn today,’ they don’t know,” Braaten said. “With this methodology of teaching, kids are responding because they were challenged instead of just taking notes and regurgitating those notes. That was one of the most important lessons I learned.”

Braaten said the knowledge learned at the academy will not just stay with him. He said part of his duties as an academy ambassador is to teach other teachers what he now knows.

“It was a very intense education for educators,” Braaten said. “Now, I have a responsibility to continue that training with other teachers at a local, state and regional level. At least once a week, one of my lessons will be inquiry-based.”

Braaten said inquiry-based education is a type where students are presented a problem in the form of a question and are asked to address the issue through investigation and exploration. He said there were five basic steps to the process.

“First we engage them with a question,” Braaten said. “The next step is to encourage them to investigate and explore different options and possibilities. Then they will try to explain why their solution is correct. Then they will try to connect that to other parts of the world and it ends with communicating it to the rest of the world.”

Braaten said the last step is where students taught in the inquiry-based educational doctrine will be able to answer the age-old question asked by parents every night over the dinner table.

“When parents ask, ‘what did you learn today’ they actually do know what they’ve learned because they have to communicate back to their peers or to me as a teacher or to someone else,” Braaten said.