Category Archives: Best Practices

Articles that gives ideas or suggestions for best teaching practices.

Teachers, consider planning a trip to Barcelona’s fascinating Parc Guell

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Author Terry Lee Marzell and her husband, Hal, visit Barcelona’s Parc Guell. The Art Nouveau serpentine bench designed by architect Antoni Saudi, and the elementary school behind them, are part of the area designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Photo Credit: Hal and Terry Lee Marzell

Spring break is the time that many educators are eager to incorporate travel into their vacation plans. Teachers know that travel, in addition to being fun and intellectually stimulating, is one of the most meaningful learning opportunities available for both themselves and for their students. Recently, I returned from a vacation to Spain, Portugal, and Gibraltar, and while I was there I could see many opportunities for incorporating travel experiences into classroom curriculum.

While visiting Barcelona, I discovered it is impossible to overlook the work of famous architect Antoni Gaudi, known for developing a distinctive Art Nouveau style, which is so prevalent throughout the city. Gaudi was born in 1852 in the Spanish city Reus, and tragically passed away in Barcelona following a road accident in 1926. He is best known for his design of the city’s Sagrada Familia Basilica, whose construction is still in progress. But this famous church is not the topic of today’s post.

In addition to the Sagrada Familia, my husband and I visited Gaudi’s Parc Guell, a public space comprised of gardens and architectural creations designed by Gaudi to serve the needs of residents for a housing project. The architect was hired by Count Eusebi Guell to design a planned community as an entrepreneurial venture. Guell’s intent was to build the residences, along with other community elements, on a tract of land located on the Spanish city’s Carmel Hill. Unfortunately, the residences were never built, but, fortunately, the park was.

I loved Parc Guell far more than I thought I would! I loved the rolling, organic, wavy aspects of Gaudi’s signature style, which is labelled Art Nouveau. Sometimes the style is described as naturalist, but in Barcelona the term used to describe it is Catalan Modernist. I’m not the only one who finds the park’s architectural design fascinating. In fact, the place was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1969.

In his youth, Gaudi had been a sickly child, and as he lay, day after day, staring out his bedroom window, he had plenty of time to observe the organic and animal forms, earthy colors, and polygonal geometries found in nature. These forms made a huge impression on the child, who incorporated them in his architectural designs once he grew to adulthood and launched his career. Gaudi observed that in nature there are no straight lines, so he deliberately avoided straight lines in his designs. I appreciated the curvilinear walking paths, which were innovative in his day, and the roadway bridge supports that resembled the natural lines of tree trunks. And who would think to build nesting areas into those bridge supports, so that birds could build their homes there? Gaudi did.

The park’s grand terrace serves as the focal point of the recreational space. The famous serpentine bench, considered the longest bench in the world, was created around a playground area. Gaudi intended the bench to provide ample seating for mothers who were supervising their children at play and allow for plenty of conversational exchange. Straight-lined benches, he reasoned, restricted interaction. And the architect was ahead of his time, insisting that the seating piece be constructed with recycled materials. Anyone who visits the park can attest that the panoramic view of the city from that terrace is astonishing.

Directly next door to the terrace is the Escola Baldiri Reixac, an elementary school that was converted from Count Guell’s former residence. This probably accounts for the linear construction of this building, which is so different from Gaudi’s typical curvilinear constructions. The school was not opened in Gaudi’s day, but today the structure is in use. More than 17 teachers work there, serving more than 200 young students. As I stood there gazing at the building, I reflected that Gaudi’s decision to build a school in the middle of a park is a demonstration of the architect’s desire to consider the various needs of all the people that would have lived in the community.

Gaudi also incorporated marketplaces and vendor stalls and created an ingenious system of water conservation to serve the planned-but-never-constructed community. He constructed columns to support the terrace from underneath, and these supports served as conduits to direct rainwater flow into cisterns located underneath the marketplace. Really ingenious. Gaudi was more than an architect, he was an urban planner ahead of his time.

Gaudi positioned a ceramic iguana in a fountain built on the staircase that descends from the Parc Guell marketplace. Photo Credit: Terry Lee Marzell

And the icing on this architectural cake? He also designed two little buildings that resemble the gingerbread houses of “Hansel and Gretel” at the foot of a grand staircase. The architect conceived these little structures as a bit of whimsy meant to entertain children. And who couldn’t be charmed by that the big ceramic iguana positioned in the fountain as you descend the staircase to reach the gingerbread houses?

The entire park is captivating, and well worth a visit for any teacher who may be going to Barcelona on vacation. Keep it in mind when you’re planning future travels! Here at home, a study of the Gaudi’s architectural style would be stimulating for drafting students, and all students could benefit from a study of Gouda’s use of recycled materials and his innovative, environmentally-friendly designs for water conservation.

If travel to Spain is not in the near future for yourself or your students, check out this website for additional photographs of the Park Guell, information, and a virtual tour at this link: https://parkguell.barcelona/en/renovation-works-status.

Portugal’s Monument to the Discoveries stimulates further historical inquiry

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While on a recent visit of Lisbon, Portugal, author Terry Lee Marzell visits the Monument of the Discoveries located where the Tagus River empties into the Atlantic Ocean. The monument celebrates the Portuguese Age of Discovery. Photo Credit: Hal Marzell

Spring break has finally arrived. This is the time that many educators are eager to incorporate travel into their vacation plans. Teachers know that travel, in addition to being fun and intellectually stimulating, is one of the most meaningful learning opportunities available for both themselves and for their students. Recently, I returned from a vacation to Spain, Portugal, and Gibraltar, and while I was there I could see many opportunities for incorporating travel experiences into classroom curriculum.

While in Portugal, I had the opportunity to visit the Monument to the Discoveries in the city of Lisbon, located on the northern bank of the Tagus River where the river empties into the Atlantic Ocean. The monument celebrates the Portuguese Age of Discovery during the 15th and 16th centuries. This is a fitting location for the construction of such a commemorative landmark, since this is the place where Portuguese ships were launched on perilous voyages to explore India and the Orient. The monument was intended to be a temporary exhibit as part of the country’s World Exhibition in1940, and became so popular that this permanent, enlarged version was constructed in 1960.

The monument displays a Portuguese caravel ship, and features the country’s celebrated Prince Henry the Navigator, a historical 15th-century figure known for being a strong supporter of maritime exploration and trade, particularly along the western coast of the African continent. In fact, it was Prince Henry who designed and financed the building of the caravel, a ship which in its day revolutionized navigational practices.

The Monument to the Discoveries stimulates further inquiry into this fascinating period of European history, not only for students, for history teachers, and for educators who are lifelong learners, but also for anyone interested in world history. Why not incorporate a visit to Lisbon in your future travels, so you can see the landmark with your own eyes?

 

The strategies Anne Sullivan Macy used to teach Helen Keller

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Miracle worker Anne Sullivan Macy employed a number of teaching strategies to teach her deaf and blind student, Helen Keller, how to communicate through sign language. Photo Credit: Public Domain

Anne Sullivan: This teacher’s name is synonymous with “miracle worker.” Anne is the remarkable teacher who worked with Helen Keller, an extremely intelligent blind and deaf child from Tuscumbia, Alabama. The relationship between the teacher and the student is explored in the play The Miracle Worker by William Gibson, an iconic piece of American literature that is frequently taught in public schools. This award-winning play depicts the exact moment at which, due to Anne’s expert instructional efforts, Helen was able to grasp the concept of language. This knowledge unlocked a world of isolation for the little girl, allowing her to connect with her fellow human beings, and making it possible for her to earn a university degree at a time when educating women was rare. The scene is sweet. But what strategies, exactly, did the miracle-working teacher use in order to achieve this breakthrough? After extensive reading on the subject, I think I may be able to identify a few of them.

First of all, Anne read every bit of published material available in her day about the education of handicapped students. She believed that knowledge of pedagogy is the first step to effective practice. In addition to this, Anne had the “advantage” of personal experience, as she herself had wrestled with severe vision impairment as a result of trachoma. I’m sure at one time or another, we’ve all met an educator who is particularly effective at working with students who are facing the same challenges the teacher himself faced as a youngster.

Second, Anne was a keen observer, and she made it a point to watch the normal processes of language acquisition. She then replicated those processes as best she could to fit the particular circumstances and needs of her student. Today, we would probably call this strategy recognizing brain-based learning, and coordinating teaching strategies to fit the way the brain naturally learns.

Also, experts generally agree that much of Anne’s success in teaching Helen language was attributed to the fact that the teacher always communicated to her student with complete sentences. Concrete nouns such as water or spoon, verbs such was pump or run, or adjectives such as hot or smooth,  may be easy to convey. But abstract ideas such as beauty or truth, or certain parts of speech such as pronouns and some prepositions are much more difficult to impart to an individual unable to see or hear. Yet Annie always used these words in her everyday communication with Helen anyway.

Fourth, Anne was especially adept at incorporating experiential learning into her lesson plans. The effectiveness of “learning by doing” has been well documented, but in a day and age when most instruction consisted of rote memorization without necessarily comprehending, Anne’s insistence on teaching through constructed experience was truly innovative. Wading through the creek water, climbing the tree, holding the chick as it hatched from the egg—experiences like these were the staples of Anne’s instructional program.

To learn more about Anne Sullivan Macy, I have included an abbreviated but concise biography of this amazing teacher in my book, Chalkboard Champions: Twelve Teachers who Educated America’s Disenfranchised Students, which can also be found at amazon.com at the following link: Chalkboard Champions.