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APRIL 2005

College of Staten Island: Rediscovering Discovery

By Joan Baum, Ph.D.

“When most people go fishing, they fish in the wrong places,” says Dr. Leonard Ciaccio, Co-Director of the Discovery Institute at the College of Staten Island (CSI) and Special Assistant to the President of CSI for Schools, with a knowing smile. A little known fact about this remarkable teacher, scientist, researcher and professor of biology is that his savvy about fishing came to him naturally, in every sense of the word. Growing up on his father’s apple farm outside New Paltz, he observed everything his father did and learned early on the value—and most especially the joy—of observing the natural world. Now, many years later, Len Ciaccio seems to have lost none of the sense of wonder that moved him from farm to fascination with fruit flies at Marist College, to Visiting Research Associate in the Department of Biology at Princeton, and to CSI, where he continues to ensure that the Discovery Institute he co-founded 18 years ago with Dr. James Sanders (a professor of education) keeps thriving. A partnership between CSI faculty and teachers from local schools to encourage conversation about how best to promote creative activities that would help promote effective learning in students, the Institute would seem to have met its goal, as evidenced by data showing that students who learn from teachers engaged in the Institute have improved attendance, get better grades, and do well on standardized tests, including college assessment exams. Another measure of success would seem to be the evolving nature of the program, from a relatively small grouping of CSI faculty and high school science teachers in 1986 to an extensive involvement of many disciplines and teachers from middle and elementary schools. Five years ago CUNY gave the program institute status, with the expectation that the CSI interdisciplinary model would have wider visibility.

Though approximately 70-75 CSI professors and staff work with approximately 400 teachers from all education levels, Dr. Ciaccio points out that the high schools are still central to the Institute’s mission, with concentration on the sciences, social studies, English and math. Dr. Ciaccio wants to be clear, however, “very clear,” that CSI’s Discovery Institute is no “magic bullet,” no teacher training program, no top-down imposition of ideas. Too many professional development programs, he suggests, tell teachers what materials to use and how to use them. The fact is, with most subject matter teachers teach the way their mentors taught them, not the way that teacher education professors advise. The Discovery Institute encourages teachers to create their own curricula, courses, materials, and course sequences, even if it appears that they are reinventing the wheel. So what, it’s their wheel, their discovery, and they’re in the driver’s seat. A wonderful side effect of the Institute has been that the participating CSI faculty have themselves been so invigorated by the Institute’s workshops, research activities, and conferences that they, too, have modified syllabi and materials. The respect goes both ways.

Sure, there are best practices out there, Dr. Ciaccio says, but the idea behind the Discovery Institute is to use existing models only as a starting point. One cannot and should not want to copy someone else’s plan. Look at babies—no matter what parents will say, they will experiment, investigate, and act on their curiosity. And how sad that as they mature, they change, with schools often inadvertently being complicit in replacing the joy that comes from discovery with a sense of wanting to please by delivering right answers. His face lights up—he’s full of examples about how Institute discussions on biology draw in history and English teachers. Teachers who attend the Institute’s weekly sessions receive no credit but are paid as non-teaching adjuncts, and of course, enjoy the big payoff: intellectual camaraderie with colleagues in and out of their own discipline. #
For more information, visit http://discovery.csi.cuny.edu.

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