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.
