Documents from the Inquiry & Design Institute

Begin with the End in Mind, Dr. Mary Massie

Inquiry Blog

Laurie Frank's Power Points

• Day One
• Day Two
• Day Three
• Day Four

The 2007 Inquiry and Design Institute

What is the Inquiry Institute and What’s in it for Me?

First Day slide show, June 18, 2007

Slide show, June 20, 2007

Program

• What’s in the Meat?
  The Jungle and Fast Food Nation as Catalysts for Change
• Who is an American?
  Uncovering the True Story of Immigration in America
• Who am I, and Who are We Together?
  In Search of Multiple Identities
• What's in the Water?
  Flushing out the Truth about Chicago’s Wastewater

See the Inquiry and Design flyer (pdf format)

What is the Inquiry Institute and What’s in it for Me?

The Summer Inquiry and Design Institute is an intensive week focused around the methodology of inquiry. Each day, you’ll explore the inquiry approach in several ways:

• You’ll participate in an Inquiry Thread as a learner among your professional peers, exploring an enduring question, using a model curricular unit led by a GEAR UP PD liaison. This will be your main focus throughout the week. (See your Inquiry Thread choices on the Official Registration Form.)
• Laurie Frank will get us up to play games that support a mini inquiry on community. How do we build community in the classroom? Why does it Matter? (See Laurie’s bio below.)
• You’ll uncover your expectations and assumptions with Gail Cruise-Roberson. (Her bio’s here too.)
• You’ll research and plan your own inquiry unit with a coach. You can opt to write a unit-for-books and earn a classroom set of books.
• You can earn 30 CPDUs, 2 lane credits, or 3 semester hours of graduate credit. (Look for more info on the registration form.)
• Breakfast and lunch will be provided every day.

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What’s in the Meat? The Jungle and Fast Food Nation as Catalysts for Change

• Are these books examples of muckraking or investigative journalism?
• Did they inspire change, or have things stayed the same?
• And what other inquiry-based studies, like “Supersize Me,” have they paved the way for?

Cut into these contentious texts along with some juicy primary sources to determine the authors' intent and whether they achieved their desired outcomes. Explore economic, industrial, nutritional, ethical, cultural, and global costs of fast food to farmers, customers (including children), and franchise owners. Integrate arts, technology, history, science, language arts, and service-learning.

Tina Peano is a former English teacher at Best Practice High School, a pioneering institution where inquiry—especially involving collaborative teaching with integrated units and formal showcasing of student learning--was a way of life. Today, she works with National Louis University as a consultant to the Center for City Schools, working with teachers through team-teaching and professional development activities, as a High School Matters Coach at Foreman High School, and as Literacy Consultant for the Chicago History Fair.

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Who is an American? Uncovering the True Story of Immigration in America

• What policies have effected immigration and how has immigration influenced U.S. policy?
• What issues surround the immigrant experience?
• Who are the immigrants and how does immigration shape personal identity?
• Why do people migrate?
• Who benefits?

Work together with your peers to unravel the stories behind immigration. Examine the personal, political, historical, economical, and social aspects of this issue, by looking at a variety of resources through dissenting points of view. Strategies may include guest speakers, learning stations, debating, role playing, and written conversation. Develop a unit that you can deliver in the fall.

Beatriz Jamaica has an M.A. in Education from the University of California, Santa Barbara. She has worked 14 years at UIC as an academic advisor in the Department of Mathematics, Statistics, and Computer Science. She also trained instructors for the cooperative learning based mathematics workshops. She currently works as the Parent and Student Services Manager in the Cicero Berwyn Initiative for Educational Excellence at CTC.

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Who am I, and Who are We Together? In Search of Multiple Identities

• How can we better understand the varied identities that exist in each of us and in any group?
• How can we address the challenges that can be present in a diverse community of learners?

Begin your work close to home. Explore your own multi-faceted identity through guided writing, art, monologue and dialogue. Through poetry, speech, drawing, and music, you will participate in models of intra, interpersonal, and multicultural communication with willing peers. Together, we’ll look at our identities through the prisms of gender, race, language, class, ethnicity, sexuality, religious beliefs, and more. Learn how to build learning communities that can appreciate, support, and strengthen the diverse, multiple identities comprising most classrooms. Collect products and strategies that you can adapt for your middle and high school classrooms.

Gail Cruise-Roberson is an educator and diversity specialist whose professional experience spans various educational initiatives. She has worked with school reform programs, adult continuing education through English as a Second Language, Annenberg sponsored in-school parent education programs for parents of elementary and high school students as well as college readiness programs for students in middle and high school.

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What's in the Water? Flushing out the Truth about Chicago’s Wastewater

• Where do the drains and sewers go?
• Why does the South side flood so much?
• Where does my drinking water come from?
• Why does suburban water taste so different from city water?
• What is the deep tunnel anyway?

Trace the course of water as it comes out of the tap, goes down the drain, and fills the parks and beaches. Uncover the systems, economics, and politics behind every flush. Contemplate such water realities as E. coli, acid rain, standing water, and pond scum. Participate in hands-on experiments that translate well in any classroom to engage discussion and thinking about the wonderful molecule we know as water. This science-based-inquiry will explore how water turns into waste, and then back to water and the environmental impact and implications on the community.

Roberto Bonilla is an animal care specialist, working on prairie and wetland restoration throughout Northeastern Illinois. His volunteer work includes the Biology Department at the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum and the Field Museum of Natural History. As a scientist (hey, they practically invented this inquiry stuff), he can’t keep himself from poking into the flora and fauna of Mazon Creek, a fossil rich site that dates back to when Chicago was a tropical rainforest about 400 million years ago.

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