To open the 2024-25 academic year, senior intern teachers in the School of Education participated in a Community Scavenger Hunt. Teams of interns explored the neighborhoods of their partner schools to locate places of interest and better get to know the students and families they will be teaching.
Wearing their Stevenson green SOE t-shirts, each team brought along a stuffed apple, taking selfies with the apple at each spot. The kind of locations they discovered were kid and family friendly places like parks, playgrounds, rec centers, and libraries, as well as nearby hospital or healthcare facilities and emergency personnel such as the fire department or law enforcement. They toured the different types of residential housing in the area, and looked for school bus stops, bike lanes, and other forms of transportation. They took selfies in front of grocery stores and restaurants, and anything unique to the area.
They shared their photos with all the interns to open our professional learning workshop on August 27, responding to these reflection questions: How do these places represent the students I will teach? What have I learned about the students and their families? How can our scavenger hunt be viewed from an “asset-framing” lens about the community? Where else could we have gone? The scavenger hunt was a way to explore the school community and better prepare for welcoming students to the new school year.
