Nov. 9, 2022 - Animals, Kites, Woodworking, and a Celebration of Trees!
Hello,
My name is Pam Fitzgerald, and I am the Academic Coordinator for the Peer Teaching & Learning Lamoille and Champlain Valley campuses.
We are halfway through the fall semester and have already learned so many new things from our fantastic faculty!
Our philosophy is that everyone possesses knowledge. We encourage faculty participants to teach topics they are passionate about, even if the topic is separate from our current theme, which for the fall semester is Sports and Recreation.
Many PTL Lamoille participants love animals, and this semester it seems as though we have our own academic theme, with classes about foxes, the Morgan horse, flamingoes, and border collies! We also encourage our faculty to include interactive activities, and a recent PTL Lamoille class about kites was a perfect example. Following step-by-step instructions, participants made their own small kites out of paper that actually fly!
PTL Champlain Valley has learned about Special Olympics track, an adventurous road trip to Boston, and how to use tools in a woodworking class where participants made a hook out of a small tree branch.
Giving back to the community is also a key part of PTL’s mission. PTL Lamoille just put their community garden box to bed after donating many pounds of salad turnips, radishes, cucumbers, and tomatoes to the Lamoille Food Shelf. A VERY big thank you to the Vermont Community Foundation and Vermont Mutual Insurance Group Charitable Giving Fund for their generous grants that funded this project. PTL Champlain Valley is currently decorating a tree and seeking donations of gifts to go under the tree for the Celebration of Trees event hosted by ANEW Place, a homeless shelter in Burlington. Should you wish to learn more about this fundraiser to support ANEW Place and to donate to the gifts that will go under our tree, please email me at pam@peerteachingandlearning.org.
A complete list of participant-researched and participant-led classes for our eleven campuses for the Fall 2022 semester can be found here: https://www.peerteachingandlearning.org/campuses
Don’t forget to visit our Instagram page for more photographs and highlights: https://www.instagram.com/peerteachingandlearning/
Pam Fitzgerald, Academic Coordinator
