The twenty or so participants who enrolled in the July session of the Tiorati class are all candidates for master's degrees in education at Bank Street. All are either already teaching, or hoping soon to find full-time teaching positions. Brianna Sayers teaches third grade at a charter school in Jersey City, N.J., and specializes in reading. In the case of the Tiorati workshop, the inquiry method consists of a very open-ended process. The class is based in a cabin-classroom area nestled in Harriman State Park, an hour north of New York City.
Participants travel there by bus for each of the six sessions.
Although the teachers are encouraged to supplement their learning by outside reading and some library research, much of their work involves site visits. Each group is encouraged to learn as much as it can through direct observation and the creation of simple experiments that could also be used by children in the classroom. At the end of the six sessions, all four groups meet to present their findings to one another and to discuss how they felt about the process. But they have to understand that this course has two focuses. One is what they learn about the environment, but the other is the process of inquiry.